VIBRATIONAL-ENERGY CONSERVATION WITH VIBRATION-DISSOCIATION COUPLING - GENERAL-THEORY AND NUMERICAL-STUDIES

The coupling between vibrational relaxation and dissociation in nitrog en is studied. The conservation of vibrational energy equation is deri ved and the form of the source terms is determined for physically cons istent coupling models. Using a computational fluid dynamics method, t he results from three current coupling models are compared to existing experimental interferograms for spherical geometries. It is found tha t the coupling models of Park, Treanor and Marrone, and Macheret and R ich are able to accurately predict the shock standoff distances and re produce the experimental interference patterns for these conditions. H owever, there are differences in the vibrational temperature profiles among the coupling models. The experimental interferograms are not sen sitive to these differences, though. (C) 1995 American Institute of Ph ysics.