Theory of aerodynamic heating from molecular collision analysis

Publication date: Available online 30 October 2019Source: Physics Letters AAuthor(s): Yi Tao, Zhongwu Li, Quan Han, Chengdong Sun, Yan Zhang, Yunfei ChenAbstractAn aerodynamic heating model is derived from molecular collision analysis, in which the rising temperature of a hypersonic flying object as a function of the flying speed in a classical dense monoatomic gas environment is set up. The model predicts that the rising temperature of the hypersonic flying object is independent of the gas density but depends linearly on the gas atomic mass. A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation is carried out to verify the theoretical model. Also, through analyzing the vibrational density of states in the flying objects, it is found that the excited phonon frequency is near the collision frequency, uncovering that the phonons are mainly excited by the face colliding gas atoms. Our study provides a new insight into understanding the intrinsic mechanism of aerodynamic heating and helps to develop the temperature-controllable hypersonic flying vehicle.
Source: Physics Letters A - Category: Physics Source Type: research