NONEQUILIBRIUM EFFECTS IN NEAR-WAKE IONIZING FLOWS

An analysis of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium effects in near-wak e ionizing flows is presented. The influence of real-gas effects on th e establishment of scaling laws of the near-wake properties is analyze d, and a simplified model, which relies on an idealized flow solver st ill capable of accounting for dissociation and ionization effects, is developed. A study of the flows around sphere-cone and Apollo-like re- entry capsule bodies shows that the forebody nonequilibrium does affec t the quantities that characterize the near-wake behavior (e.g., upstr eam influence, extent of recirculation, peak heating along the base). In addition, we show that real-gas effects can be recovered by means o f an idealized-gas model that solves for the compressible Navier-Stoke s equations and a transport equation for the specific-heat ratio gamma , supplemented with algebraic relations to determine the species mass fractions and vibrational temperature as a function of gamma.