Turbulent boundary layer on a catalytic surface in a nonequilibrium dissociating gas

The majority of the studies which consider the flow of a dissociating gas in a turbulent boundary layer are devoted to the investigation of either frozen or equilibrium flows on a flat plate.The frozen turbulent boundary layer has been studied by Dorrance [1], Kutateladze and Leont'ev [2], and Lapin and Sergeev [3]. A study of the effect of catalytic recombination processes at the plate surface on the heat transfer in a frozen turbulent boundary layer was made by Lapin [4].Kosterin and Koshmarov [5], Ginzburg [6], Dorrance [7], and Lapin [8] have studied the turbulent boundary layer on a plate in equilibrium dissociating gas.The calculation of the heat transfer in a turbulent boundary layer on a catalytic plate surface with nonequilibrium dissociation was made by Kulgein [9]. In this study the nonequilibrium nature of the dissociation process was taken into account only in the laminar sublayer, while the flow in the turbulent core was considered frozen. The solution was found numerically using a computer by means of a laborious iteration process.The present paper reports a method for calculating the turbulent boundary layer on a flat catalytic plate with arbitrary dissociation rate. The method, constructed using the assumptions customary for turbulent boundary layer theory, is a successive approximation method. Good convergence of the method is assured by the fact that the effect of the nonequilibrium nature of the dissociation process on the parameter distribution in the boundary layer and, consequently, on the friction and heat transfer may be allowed for merely by finding corrections, usually relatively small, to the distribution of these parameters in the equilibrium or frozen flows. The basis of the study is the two-layer scheme of the turbulent boundary layer. The Prandtl and Schmidt numbers and also their turbulent analogs are taken equal to unity. As the model of the dissociating gas we use the Lighthill model of the ideal dissociating gas [10], extended by Freeman [11] to nonequilibrium flows.