Collisional-Radiative Modeling In Flow Simulations

Abstract

The present notes address the modeling of high speed re-entry plasma flows under strong nonequilibrium conditions. At high re-entry speeds, a significant portion of the heating experienced by the spacecraft can be due to radiation and it is highly inuenced by the shape of the internal energy distribution function. In this notes, we propose a kinetic mechanism for air plasma under nonequilibrium conditions. We first analyze the behavior of the electronically excited state of the atoms in the post shock region during an high speed re-entry. The flight conditions are taken from FIRE II flight experiment and from the test conditions in the EAST shock tube facility. We move then to a more sophisticated model which accounts for non-boltzmann effects for electronic levels of atoms and molecules. Departure of the electronic energy level populations from Boltzmann distributions is found due to depletion of the high lying bound electronic states in the rapidly ionizing regime behind the strong shock wave.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 08, 2008
Accession Number
ADA586722

Entities

People

  • Anne Bourdon
  • Arnaud Bultel
  • Marco Panesi
  • Olivier Chazot
  • Thierry Magin
  • Yacine Babou

Organizations

  • von Kármán Institute for Fluid Dynamics

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Chemical Kinetics
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Databases
  • Differential Equations
  • Electron Density
  • Electron Energy
  • Electrons
  • Energy Levels
  • Energy Transfer
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Free Electrons
  • Ground State
  • High Pressure
  • Measurement
  • Simulations

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion Dynamics and Shock Wave Physics.
  • Missile Defense Systems.
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster