Thermochemical Nonequilibrium 2D Modeling of Nitrogen Inductively Coupled Plasma Flow

Two-dimensional（2D） numerical simulations of thermochemical nonequilibrium inductively coupled plasma（ICP） flows inside a 10-kW inductively coupled plasma wind tunnel（ICPWT） were carried out with nitrogen as the working gas.Compressible axisymmetric NavierStokes（N-S） equations coupled with magnetic vector potential equations were solved.A fourtemperature model including an improved electron-vibration relaxation time was used to model the internal energy exchange between electron and heavy particles.The third-order accuracy electron transport properties（3rd AETP） were applied to the simulations.A hybrid chemical kinetic model was adopted to model the chemical nonequilibrium process.The flow characteristics such as thermal nonequilibrium,inductive discharge,effects of Lorentz force were made clear through the present study.It was clarified that the thermal nonequilibrium model played an important role in properly predicting the temperature field.The prediction accuracy can be improved by applying the 3rd AETP to the simulation for this ICPWT.

Numerical Investigation of Flow Fields in Inductively Coupled Plasma Wind Tunnels

Numerical simulations of 10 kW and 110 kW inductively coupled plasma （ICP） wind tunnels were carried out to study physical properties of the flow inside the ICP torch and vacuum chamber with air as tile working gas. Two-dimensional compressible axisymmetric Navier- Stokes （N-S） equations that took into account 11 species and 49 chemical reactions of air, were solved. A heat source model was used to describe the heating phenomenon instead of solving the electromagnetic equations. In the vacuum chamber, a four-temperature model was coupled with N-S equations. Numerical results for tile 10 kW ICP wind tunnel are presented and discussed in detail as a representative case. It was found that the plasma flow in the vacuum chamber tended to be in local thermoehemical equilibrium. To study the influence of operation conditions on the flow field, simulations were carried out for different chamber pressures and/or input powers. The computational results for the above two ICP wind tunnels were compared with corresponding experimental data. The computational and experimental results agree well, therefore the flow fields of ICP wind tunnels can be clearly understood.

A Study of Thermal Response and Flow Field Coupling Simulation around Hayabusa Capsule Loaded with Light-Weight Ablator

The numerical simulation of flow field around Hayabusa capsule loaded with light-weight ablator thermal response coupled with pyrolysis gas flow inside the ablator was carried out. In addition, the radiation from high temperature gas around the capsule was coupled with flow field. Hayabusa capsule reentered the atmosphere about 12 km/sec in velocity and Mach number about 30. During such an atmospheric entry, space vehicle is exposed to very savior aerodynamic heating due to convection and radiation. In this study, Hayabusa capsule was treated as a typical model of the atmospheric entry spacecraft. The light-weight ablator had porous structure, and permeability was an important parameter to analyze flow inside ablator. In this study, permeability was a variable parameter dependent on density of ablator. It is found that the effect of permeability of light-weight ablator was important with this analysis.

Numerical and Experimental Studies of an Arc-heated Nonequilibrium Nozzle Flow

The arc-heated high-temperature gas is rotationally and vibrationally excited, and partially dissociated and ionized. When such gas flows inside a nozzle, energy transfers from rotational and vibrational energy modes to translational energy mode, and, in addition, recombination reactions occur. These processes are in thermal and chemical nonequilibrium. The present computations treat arc-heated nonequilibrium nozzle flows using a six temperature model (translational, rotational, N2 vibrational, 02 vibrational, NO vibrational and electron temperatures), and nonequilibrium chemical reactions of air. From the calculated flow properties, emission spectra at the nozzle exit were re-constructed by using the code for computing spectra of high temperature air. On the other hand, measurements of N2^+ (1-) emission spectra were conducted at the nozzle exit in the 20 kW arc-heated wind tunnel. Vibrational and rotational temperatures of N2 were determined using a curve fitting method on N2^+ (1-) emission spectra, with the vibrational and rotational temperatures for N2 and N2^+ being assumed equal. Comparison of the measured and computed results elucidated that the experimental temperatures were larger than the computed ones. At present, we are trying to reveal the main reason for the discrepancy between the computed and measured N2 vibrational and rotational temperatures.