Experimental verfication of real gas effects in high enthalphy flows

This paper deals with the possibilities to study the effects of oxygen and nitrogen dissociation in experiments where this reaction occurs over a sufficiently short distance in stagnating flows. The scope of this paper does not cover the real gas effects of combustion in high enthalphy flows. First, the capabilities of the various types of experimental facilities for generating high enthalpy flows will be discussed. Samples of aerothermodynamic tests performed in these facilities will be discussed. Some of these experiments are reconfirmations of experiments like flow over blunt bodies performed in the Australian tunnels T3 and T4 where the difference lies in the new instrumentation applied to the same flow problems, others are new studies of external aerothermodynamics like the experiments on shock/shock interactions. The significance of the dissociation effects in the above experiments is pointed out