Rotation-vibration-dissociation interaction in a multicomponent nonequilibrium viscous shock layer

Abstract

A new, simple and physically adequate method of calculating vibrationally nonequilibrium dissociation constants is proposed on the basis of a dissociation model which takes into account the equilibrium excitation of the rotational degrees of freedom of the molecules and the nonequilibrium excitation of vibrational quantum states. This rotation-vibration-dissociation interaction model contains only the indeterminacy associated with the indeterminacy of the experimental data on the interaction potentials and the collision cross sections of the components. In the case of thermodynamic equilibrium the model gives values of the dissociation constants close to those generally accepted. The use of this model in multicomponent nonequilibrium total viscous shock layer calculations gives values for the shock detachment distance within 5% of the experimental values. The indeterminacy in the values of the vibrational energy lost by air molecules during dissociation and recovered during recombination does not lead to serious errors in the macrocharacteristics of the flow. The nonequilibrium excitation of vibrational degrees of freedom proves to be not so important in computing the macrocharacteristics of the flow as previously assumed and the existing algorithms for calculating chemically nonequilibrium flows on the assumption of thermodynamic equilibrium can be used with satisfactory accuracy for calculating the values of the heat flux, the position of the shock wave, and the temperature and pressure in the shock layer for partially dissociated and ionized air.