| To accurately determine the local heat loads that could occur on a hypersonic vehicle, this dissertation presents a realistic numerical calculation of a hypersonic nonequilibrium shock wave/boundary layer interaction (SWBLI) that includes the effects of surface catalysis. The catalysis model from Jumper, Seward and Newman was used to calculate the atomic oxygen and nitrogen recombination on a reaction-cured glass (RCG) surface. Also, catalysis rates for recombination on copper oxide were used as well. Furthermore, the surface temperature was determined by coupling the thermal conduction inside the surface with the convective heat flow due to the external fluid dynamics, for a reasonable heat pipe configuration. Results demonstrate that RCG, though relatively benign with regard to oxygen, does catalyze the atomic nitrogen at the surface, enough to make an appreciable difference in the surface heating. Results have also shown that for highly catalytic surfaces, such as copper, nitric oxide formation is considerable, even though its production is neglected from the catalytic mechanisms. With regard to the coupling between catalytic heating and the separation region of the SWBLI, a comparison of results obtained from both mildly and highly separated flows indicate that surface catalysis significantly increases the heat transfer downstream of the separation region. However, because the majority of the chemical recombination is contained inside the separation zone and away from the region of peak heating, the effects of surface catalysis on the peak heat transfer is not critically affected by the separation zone size. |
