{"id":22654,"date":"2025-10-22T14:20:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/?p=22654"},"modified":"2025-10-22T14:20:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:20:05","slug":"numerical-modeling-of-plasma-formation-in-hypersonic-flow-a-comparative-study-of-thermochemical-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/22\/numerical-modeling-of-plasma-formation-in-hypersonic-flow-a-comparative-study-of-thermochemical-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Numerical Modeling of Plasma Formation in Hypersonic Flow: A Comparative Study of Thermochemical Models"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Salvatore ESPOSITO, Antonio SCHETTINO, Luigi CUTRONE, Domenic D&#8217; AMBROSIO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DOI Number: N\/A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conference number: HiSST-2025-244<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plasma formation in hypersonic reentry flows affects electromagnetic wave propagation, with direct implications for vehicle communications and radar signature. Accurate prediction of ionization is therefore essential to quantify these effects. This work presents a numerical analysis of electron density under the examined flight conditions of the RAM-C II vehicle using the in-house solver NExT, compared against CFD++ results and flight measurements. The simulations solve the compressible Navier\u2013Stokes equa-<br>tions for a multicomponent, chemically reacting air mixture in thermal and chemical nonequilibrium, incorporating a multi-temperature model for vibrational energy. The influence of chemical kinetics, vibrational\u2013chemical coupling, and surface catalyticity is systematically assessed. Among the tested kinetic schemes, Park\u201985 consistently overestimates electron concentrations, whereas Park\u201993 and Kim achieve closer agreement with experimental data. Surface boundary conditions also affect results, with a hybrid<br>approach\u2014non-catalytic for neutral species and catalytic for charged species\u2014producing the most consistent match with experimental data. Differences between NExT and CFD++ are most pronounced at the lowest and highest altitudes, whereas chemical kinetics and wall treatments affect electron density predictions across the examined flight conditions. The study provides a quantitative evaluation of modeling assumptions in hypersonic plasma simulations, supporting the application of NExT to reentry flow analyses where plasma\u2013electromagnetic interactions are relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/HISST2025_244_paper.pdf\">Read the full paper here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>Salvatore ESPOSITO, Antonio SCHETTINO, Luigi CUTRONE, Domenic D&#8217; AMBROSIO<\/b><\/p>\n<p>DOI Number: N\/A<\/p>\n<p>Conference number: HiSST-2025-244<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[993,3367,3361],"tags":[1043,3524,3523,1290],"class_list":["post-22654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-high-speed-aerodynamics-and-aerothermodynamics-with-application-to-hypersonic-regimes","category-1-hisst-2025","tag-aerothermodynamics","tag-chemical-kinetics","tag-ionization","tag-non-equilibrium","category-993","category-3367","category-3361","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22656,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654\/revisions\/22656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aerospacerepository.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}