Laminar boundary layer in flow of a nonequilibrium ionized gas

The motion of a hypersonic body is accompanied by an increase in the gas temperature in the boundary layer up to tens of thousands of degrees, which causes the gas to ionize. Under these conditions there are problems in calculating coefficients of viscosity, diffusion, and heat conduction. Investigations have shown that it is invalid to extrapolate the widely used approximations for transport coefficients in the high temperature region [1–3]. This paper considers the laminar boundary layer in the vicinity of the stagnation point of a blunt body in a stream of monatomic nonequilibrium ionized gas. The main thrust is a more accurate calculation of transport coefficients and an investigation of their effect on profiles of the gasdynamic parameters. A specific calculation is performed for argon by way of example.