ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHOICE OF TRANSPORT AND CHEMICAL-MODELS FOR NONEQUILIBRIUM HYPERSONIC FLOW SIMULATIONS

The influence of the choice of transport and chemical models on the nu merical simulation of hypersonic flows in chemical non-equilibrium is investigated. A coupled Euler/boundary layer method is employed, which facilitates the incorporation of different models and simplifies the calculation of the resulting flowfields. By considering hypersonic flo ws with different freestream conditions, it is shown that for Rows dom inated by chemical reactions, the computed flowfields can be sensitive to the choice of model. This sensitivity must be taken into account w hen defining test cases for the validation of numerical simulations of hypersonic re-entry flows.