Characteristics of impact-generated plasma with different electron temperature and gas temperature

Abstract

The characteristics of the plasma with difference between the electron temperature and gas temperature were investigated and the relationship between the plasma ionization degree and the internal energy of a system was obtained. A group of equations included the chemical reaction equilibrium equation, the chemical reaction rate equation and the energy conservation equation were adopted to calculate the electron density, the electron temperature and the atom temperature with a given internal energy. These equations combined with Navier–Stokes (N–S) equations is solved by a smooth particle hydrodynamic (SPH) code. The charges generated in hypervelocity impacts with five different velocities are calculated and verified with the empirical formulas. The influence of a critical velocity for plasma generation is considered in the empirical formula and the parameters are fitted by the numerical results. By comparing with the results in reference, the fitted new empirical formula is verified to be reasonable and useful for a wide range of impact velocity.