Effects of chemical energy accommodation on nonequilibrium flow and heat transfer to a catalytic wall

The accurate prediction of the aeroheating performance of hypersonic vehicles requires more detailed modeling of the catalysis process, rather than merely employing a catalytic coeffi-cient. In this paper, the theoretical modeling, as well as the direct simulation Monte Carlo method, is used to preliminarily study the incomplete chemical energy accommodation effects, that is, only a part of the potential energy released in the heterogenous recombination reaction is transferred to the surface, while the remaining is retained as the vibrational energy of the desorbed molecule. An integrated model is proposed to describe the contribution of each energy mode in the rarefied nonequilibrium heat and mass transfer process. Based on the model and several Damkohler num-bers, an analytical formula is derived, and is also shown to compare well with the numerical results. On account of the incomplete accommodations of the chemical and vibrational energy on the wall, a variation up to 20% is observed in predicting the stagnation point heat flux under typical nonequilibrium flow conditions. This study could enrich our understanding of the nonequilibrium heat transfer phenomenon and also shows a potential practical value.(c) 2022 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper presents a study on the aeroheating performance of hypersonic vehicles, specifically focusing on modeling the catalysis process and analyzing the incomplete chemical energy accommodation effects. The authors propose an integrated model to describe the contribution of each energy mode in the heat and mass transfer process. An analytical formula derived from the model is shown to compare well with numerical results, highlighting the variations in predicting the stagnation point heat flux under nonequilibrium flow conditions. The study contributes to a better understanding of nonequilibrium heat transfer and demonstrates its practical value.