A chemical equilibrium method for hypersonic flow simulations (Q1309616)

We report a new and efficient method to simulate high-speed, chemically reacting flows with a chemical equilibrium model. This computational method is based on the Helmholtz free-energy minimization with two additional treatments to enhance computational efficiency. First, an estimation scheme for species compositions is implemented to either bypass the numerical iterations or significantly reduce them in the free- energy minimization procedure. Second, a frozen flow calculation method is adopted to take advantage of the non-reacting part of the hypersonic flow field. The flow solver adopted in the present study is incorporated with comprehensive, high temperature, gas property models to simulate hypersonic flows and employs an implicit, finite-volume, lower-upper, time marching scheme. Finally, hypersonic internal flows under severe conditions are simulated as numerical examples.