Calculations of Electron Temperature across a Shock Wave of a Partially Ionized Gas

Abstract

The electron temperature profile across a nor- mal shock wave in weakly ionized nonequilibrium argon was calculated by the numerical integration of the energy conservation equation of the electrons using the MOTT-SMITH's solution for the ions and the atoms. Assuming chemical reaction is frozen, we analyzed this problem at the several values of electron-massive particle temperature ratio ahead of the shock wave by two methods, say, by extending the approximate method of GREWAL et al. and by integrating directly the energy conservation equation of the electron using trial method. The profiles of the electron temperature obtained by these two methods agreed each other.
In order to examine the effect of recombination on electron temperature profile across a shock, we numerically integrated the electron energy equation with the assumption that the relevant recombination process is the electron-electron-ion three body recombination.