Numerical Modeling of Hypersonic Weakly Ionized External Flowfields with Poisson’s Equation

What is it about?

In hypersonic flows, the effect of charged particles such as ions and electrons are numerically model in an oversimplified manner, typically relying on some sort of electric field approximation to estimate the electric field and the ambipolar assumption to calculate a diffusion velocity dominated by ambipolar diffusion. An alternative to this approach is to find a more rigorous model to calculate the electric field (such as by solving the Poisson's equation) and a simplified but lest restrictive model for the calculation of the diffusion velocity of the charged particles by solving the charged particle's momentum equations.

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