With the continuous increase in flight velocity and the expansion of operational airspace for high-speed vehicles, the aerodynamic heating environment they encounter has become increasingly complex. The surrounding flow field generally exhibits pronounced thermochemical nonequilibrium characteristics, which place higher demands on the accuracy and reliability of the fundamental thermochemical and transport data used in numerical simulations.
This study focuses on the thermochemical nonequilibrium phenomena within the shock layer during atmospheric reentry and high-speed cruise of high-speed vehicles. Starting from a comparative analysis of multicomponent transport property calculation methods, the effects of different chemical reaction models on the thermochemical kinetic evolution and radiative characteristics in the post-shock region are systematically investigated. Two representative flight conditions—high-altitude/high-Mach and low-altitude/low-Mach regimes—are considered. A comparative analysis is conducted among the Collisional-Radiative (CR) model, the Park model, and the Gupta model with respect to their predictions in the post-shock region.
The results show that under high-enthalpy and strongly nonequilibrium conditions, significant discrepancies exist among different models in predicting the number density evolution of major neutral species (N2, O2, NO, N, O) and ionized species ( \textN_2^+ , \textO_2^+ , NO+, N+, O+, and free electrons). Specifically, the CR model predicts relatively delayed molecular dissociation and atomic ionization processes, whereas the Park and Gupta models yield significantly faster dissociation and ionization rates. These differences mainly arise from the distinct treatments of vibrational energy levels and assumptions regarding nonequilibrium energy distributions in each model.
On this basis, a radiative transfer model is further developed. The line-by-line (LBL) method is employed to calculate radiative coefficients across the spectral range from vacuum ultraviolet to infrared, accounting for bound-bound, bound-free, and free-free radiative transitions in both atomic and molecular systems. The results indicate that, under high-altitude and high-Mach conditions, substantial differences exist in the predicted post-shock radiative heat flux among different chemical reaction models. The selection of the chemical reaction model therefore plays a critical role in accurately predicting both the chemical composition and radiative characteristics within the shock layer.