Investigation of heat transfer at the critical point of a sphere around which flows a hypersonic flow of carbon dioxide gas

Abstract

The article gives the numerical results of an investigation of flow near the leading critical flow line with the hypersonic flow of carbon dioxide gas around a sphere. The investigation was made on the basis of a simplified system of Navier-Stokes equations for a five-component model of the gas, taking account of dissociation-recombination relaxation processes of the components of the gas, as well as of the excitation and deactivation of the vibrational degrees of freedom of molecules of carbon dioxide gas. The calculations were made in a range of values of the pressure in the oncoming flow from 10−7 to 10−3 atm, and of the velocity from 4.5 to 8 km/sec for a sphere of radius 2 m. The surface of the sphere was assumed to be either ideally catalytic or chemically neutral. The dependence of the heat-transfer parameter on the determining parameters of the flow is obtained.