Effects of Surface-Catalysis Efficiency on Aeroheating Characteristics in Hypersonic Flow

Abstract

In this paper, effects of the surface-catalysis efficiency on aeroheating characteristics are studied. The Navier–Stokes solver with a cell-centered finite-volume scheme, including the finite-rate chemistry and two-temperature thermal nonequilibrium models, is implemented in this work. The ELECTRE flight trajectory at 53 km is used for validating the developed solver. Several cases with different catalytic recombination coefficients are studied to investigate the effects of catalysis efficiency under the condition of radiative equilibrium for the C series of Radio Attenuation Measurement project II flight trajectory at 71 km. It is revealed that distributions of heat flux and wall temperature have the similar tendency for all cases except for the Stewart model. Heat flux and wall temperature do not grow endlessly as the catalytic recombination coefficients are increased. It is the gradient of species density rather than gradient of temperature that leads to the significant differences of heat flux and wall temperature for different cases. The results indicate that the zone influenced by catalysis efficiency for atomic oxygen is larger than the one for atomic nitrogen and that the recombination reactions of atomic oxygen are more active.