Modeling study of rarefied gas effects on hypersonic reacting stagnation flows

Abstract

Recent development of the near space hypersonic sharp leading vehicles has raised a necessity to fast and accurately predict the aeroheating in hypersonic rarefied flows, which challenges our understanding of the aerothermodynamics and aerothermochemistry. The present flow and heat transfer problem involves complex rarefied gas effects and nonequilibrium real gas effects which are beyond the scope of the traditional prediction theory based on the continuum hypothesis and equilibrium assumption. As a typical example, it has been found that the classical Fay-Riddell equation fails to predict the stagnation point heat flux, when the flow is either rarefied or chemical nonequilibrium. In order to design a more general theory covering the rarefied reacting flow cases, an intuitive model is proposed in this paper to describe the nonequilibrium dissociation-recombination flow along the stagnation streamline towards a slightly blunted nose in hypersonic rarefied flows. Some characteristic flow parameters are introduced, and based on these parameters, an explicitly analytical bridging function is established to correct the traditional theory to accurately predict the actual aeroheating performance. It is shown that for a small size nose in medium density flows, the flow at the outer edge of the stagnation point boundary layer could be highly nonequilibrium, and the aeroheating performance is distinguished from that of the big blunt body reentry flows at high altitudes. As a result, when the rarefied gas effects and the nonequilibrium real gas effects are both significant, the classical similarity law could be questionable, and it is inadequate to directly analogize results from the classical blunt body reentry problems to the present new generation sharp-leading vehicles. In addition, the direct simulation Monte Carlo method is also employed to validate the conclusion.