The accommodation of the translational and rotational energy of a gas in a Knudsen flow past a thin wire

The paper presents the results obtained in determining the accommodation coefficients for the translational and rotational energy of gas molecules in a Knudsen flow past a thin wire. The method used was based on numerically solving the complete heat balance equation for a wire probe. The accommodation coefficients were determined for H₂, N₂, CH₄, and CO₂ on a gilded tungsten surface. For hydrogen with a quenched rotational energy, a negative accommodation coefficient of rotational energy was obtained due to the conversion of the rotational energy of incident molecules into the translational energy of reflected molecules.