An analysis of artificial viscosity effects on reacting flows using a spectral multi-domain technique

Standard techniques used to model chemically-reacting flows require an artificial viscosity for stability in the presence of strong shocks. The resulting shock is smeared over at least three computational cells, so that the thickness of the shock is dictated by the structure of the overall mesh and not the shock physics. A gas passing through a strong shock is thrown into a nonequilibrium state and subsequently relaxes down over some finite distance to an equilibrium end state. The artificial smearing of the shock envelops this relaxation zone which causes the chemical kinetics of the flow to be altered. A method is presented which can investigate these issues by following the chemical kinetics and flow kinetics of a gas passing through a fully resolved shock wave at hypersonic Mach numbers. A nonequilibrium chemistry model for air is incorporated into a spectral multidomain Navier-Stokes solution method. Since no artificial viscosity is needed for stability of the multidomain technique, the precise effect of this artifice on the chemical kinetics and relevant flow features can be determined