Hypersonic nonequilibrium flow over an ablating teflon surface
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Abstract
A complex chemical system of teflon/air mixture over an axisymmetric decoy at hypersonic reentry flight conditions has been analyzed by using the nonequilibrium viscous shock-layer method. The equilibrium catalytic wall boundary condition was used to obtain the species concentration at the wall. The species conservation equation for binary mixture (air/teflon) was solved to obtain the concentration of freestream air at the wall. Two test cases were chosen to demonstrate the capability of the current code. Due to lack of experimental or theoretical data, the surface measurable quantities from the current code(VSLTEF) were compared with the equivalent air injection and no-mass injection data obtained from VSL7S code. The current code predicts a higher total heat-transfer rate than that predicted by the seven species nonequilibrium air code (VSL7S) with the same injection rate due to the high diffusional heat-transfer rate. The wall pressure was not affected by blowing, while the skin-friction coefficient was decreased (i.e., 43 % reduction for teflon ablation case ; 53 % for nonequilibrium air injection case at 125 kft) when compared with that of no-mass injection case. A shock-layer peak temperature drop ( 1512° R for 125 kft altitude and 848°R for 175 kft altitude) was observed at both cases. The temperature drops were chiefly due to endothermic reactions (dissociation) of the teflon ablation species. Due to large blowing of teflon, the average molecular weight increased substantially and resulted in a reduction of the specific heat ratio γ and an increase in the Prandtl number at the wall. The impurity of sodium was the major source of free electrons near the wall at the end of the vehicle at 125 kft altitude; however, at 175 kft altitude NO⁺ was the major source of free electrons over the entire body. The peak concentration of Na⁺ increased along the body, but that of NO⁺ decreased at both altitudes; While the chemical reaction rate data used is believed to be the best currently available, uncertainties in this data as were cited by Cresswell et al.(1967) may lead to quantitative changes in the above teflon ablation results.