Non-equilibrium thermochemistry in real shock tubes

Journal article

Shock tube experiments are essential in understanding the environment encountered by hypersonic vehicles. Such experiments provide information used to determine rate constants of chemical, relaxation and radiative processes taking place in non-equilibrium plasmas. These constants are significant drivers of uncertainty in surface heat flux predictions. Recent work has shown that flow non-uniformities in real shock tube experiments can be misinterpreted as a need to alter these parameters; however, no comprehensive model exists to decouple the effects. We show that there is a rigorous method to achieve this by using experimental measurements as boundary conditions and including their effects via reverse time integration. This method improves over previous implementations by rigorously enforcing conservation laws, incorporating two-temperature, non-equilibrium thermochemistry and explicitly modelling both forward- and backward-running sound waves in the shock tube test slug through a method of characteristics formulation. This approach allowed the effect of shock speed variation in highly non-equilibrium tests, specifically those relevant to Titan entry, to be studied for the first time. A validation study showed that properties predicted by the method were found to agree with results from a viscous, two-dimensional axisymmetric Navier–Stokes solver within 1.5 %. When applied to shock tube test cases from the EAST and T6 facilities for simulation of lunar return and Titan entry representative conditions, the method offered improved agreement with experimentally measured oxygen 777 nm and 240–440 nm radiance, respectively, when compared with previous implementations, particularly towards the rear of the test slug where forward-running sound waves from the driver become influential.

Authors: Steer, J; Clarke, J; Collen, PL; McGilvray, M; di Mare, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
• Volume: 1032
• Article number: A51
• Publication date: 2026-04-06
• Acceptance date: 2026-02-13
• DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2026.11341
• EISSN: 1469-7645
• ISSN: 0022-1120
• Language: English
• Keywords: plasmas; shock waves; hypersonic flow