Computation of High-Speed Plasma Flows in the Conditions of Thermochemical Non-Equilibrium

Abstract

A numerical method is proposed for computing an ionized high-speed flow in the conditions of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium, taking into account the interaction of a moving electrically conductive continuous medium with an electromagnetic field. These flows are described by a fully coupled system of equations, which includes the equations of continuity, momentum, total energy, rotational energy, vibrational energy, electron energy, and mass conservation of chemical components. Electrical conductivity is determined using the kinetic theory. A special explicit-implicit scheme with alternation in half steps in time was proposed for numerical solution of rigid equations of chemical components and energy modes. That made it possible to solve a completely coupled system of equations with a large number of components and modes quickly and effectively. The developed method was used for numerical simulation of the physic process of interaction of a magnetic field with an ionized flow. The results of computations preformed by the proposed method are in satisfactory agreement with experimental data and computation results of other authors.