NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THERMAL AND CHEMICAL NONEQUILIBRIUM FLOWS PAST SLENDER BLUNTED CONES

A steady laminar axisymmetric flow of viscous, heat conducting, nonequ ilibrium, partially dissociated, and ionized air past a thin slender s phere-cone is considered. The flowfield characteristics with the inter play between reactions and vibrational relaxation taken into account a re investigated, An ''adiabatic'' dissociation model accounting for bo th nonequilibrium excitation of vibrational modes and equilibrium exci tation of rotational modes of the air molecules is used to calculate t hermal nonequilibrium dissociation rate constants, In the case of ther mal equilibrium, the model yields a good agreement of dissociation con stants with experimental data widely used in hypersonic calculations. The combined effect of the multicomponent diffusion with real binary d iffusion coefficients on the heat transfer rates has been evaluated, Q uantitative assessments of the influence of thermal nonequilibrium on the flow parameters have been obtained at various freestream condition s, The influence of the body surface activity with respect to accommod ation of vibrational energy on the heat transfer rate has been evaluat ed.