Examination of nonequilibrium effects in an ionized nitrogen flow

A thermo-chemical nonequilibrium ionized nitrogen flow in a shock tube is examined. A one-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code has been developed to study the flowfield incorporating a novel treatment of the electron energy equation. In the present approach, the electron pressure is included in the electron energy flux. In contrast, previous work has removed this term from the flux to facilitate the flux splitting. The code uses a five-species gas model for ionized nitrogen characterized by translational-rotational, vibrational, and electron-electronic temperatures. The results give good agreement with experimental data except for an inadequacy in the electronic source terms. A small difference is observed between the new and old splittings which increases with higher levels of ionization.