Effect of equilibrium constant for carbon dioxide recombination in hypersonic flow analysis

An equilibrium constant is an important parameter in regard to determining the backward reaction rate constant in chemical kinetics modeling for a hypersonic flow. Three common ap-proaches for the equilibrium constant determination are based on the partition function, Gibbs free energy, and the experimental reaction rate measurement. The present study conducted a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis with different equilibrium constant formulations in a thermochemical nonequilibrium hypersonic flow in order to study the influence of the equilibrium constant in carbon dioxide flow during the Martian entry. The equilibrium constant for the carbon dioxide molecule dissociation differs from one method to another among the reactions that are considered in the carbon dioxide flow. Three different flow conditions, which are based on the experimental data that is provided in the literature, are considered in the detailed comparison analysis using CFD. The variation of the flow properties in terms of pressure, temperature, and mass fraction along the stagnation line is compared for different cases of the equilibrium constant computation. The results that are obtained from the present study confirm that the equilibrium constant influences the numerical computation in the thermochemical nonequilibrium flow especially for the non-catalytic wall boundary condition.