Non-equilibrium ideal-gas dissociation after a curved shock wave

Abstract

Analytic solutions are obtained for non-equilibrium dissociating flow of an inviscid Lighthill-Freeman gas after a curved shock, by dividing the flow into a thin reacting layer near the shock and a frozen region further downstream. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is used, with the product of shock curvature and reaction length as the small parameter. In particular, the solution gives expressions for the reacting-layer thickness, the frozen dissociation level, effective shock values of the frozen flow and the maximum density on a stream-line as functions of free-stream, gas and shock parameters. Numerical examples are presented and the results are compared with experiments.