| Abstract: | The results of measuring and numerically calculating the surface temperature distributions of heat-shield tiles with uniform and nonuniform catalytic coatings exposed to subsonic dissociated-air flows in an induction plasmotron are presented. The measurements are consistent with the calculated surface temperature profiles obtained from a numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for a chemical-nonequilibrium flow of dissociated nitrogen. The results are compared with the data of a space shuttle flight experiment on the effect of a discontinuity of heat shield catalyticity on the  overequilibrium surface temperature jump.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 3, pp. 144–150, May–June, 1991. |
