Background
Titan's atmosphere is composed mostly of N$_2$ with a small amount of CH$_4$, and so, shock layers around craft entering Titan's atmosphere will contain a variety of molecules formed from H, C, and N atoms, including the cyanogen radical CN. Sensitivity analysis has shown that the radiative heat flux predicted by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of...
1 Background of the study
Nowadays, reusable vehicles to access space are very attractive for cost reduction. Many reusable spacecrafts, such as Space Shuttle, have been conceived for both orbital and suborbital services [1]. These vehicles must withstand very high temperatures when they fly at hypersonic speeds in the continuum regime, and an adequate Thermal Protection System (TPS) is...
An electronic state-to-state kinetic model for nitrogen/argon mixtures is obtained by reduction of a state-of-the-art vibronic-specific model. The model is used to study nitrogen recombination. A high-temperature plasma initially at local thermodynamic equilibrium at 6750 K and 1 atm passes through a water-cooled tube that forces rapid cooling and nonequilibrium recombination. Simulations...
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\section{Introduction}
%\label{sec:intro}
In the last years, state-to-state (StS) chemical kinetics have been used to model high-enthalpy flows in 2D configurations in dissociating air~\cite{bonelli2024finite,guo2024investigation,wang2023high}. The recent interest in the exploration of ice giant planets~\cite{blanc2021science} needs the construction of kinetic schemes for Hydrogen/Helium...
\section{Background of the study}
\label{sec:intro}
The planned NASA missions to the ice-giants, i.e. Uranus and Neptune, push the space exploration to the edge of the solar system and commit to new challenges the research activities meant to address all the related engineering issues. Fluid-dynamic models of hypersonic entry conditions allows the estimation of heat load at the surface of...
Background of the study
The continuous study of ice giants, Uranus and Neptune is critical to advance our understanding of the solar system's origin and evolution. Despite being subject of numerous previous studies, fundamental questions still remain about the composition and thermal behaviour of their atmosphere and about the planets’ bulk composition. It is therefore paramount to...
Background to the study
Thermal-chemical kinetics for non-equilibrium flows can be accurately represented through state-to-state (StS) models, where each molecular energy state is treated as a distinct pseudo-species. However, StS modeling requires a significantly larger number of variables than multi-temperature models, as it involves hundreds of internal energy states and thousands of...
