Computation of Shockwave Structures in Weakly Ionized Gases by Solving Burnett and Modified Rankine-hugoniot Equations

The modified Rankine-Hugoniot equations across a standing normal shockwave were discussed and adapted to obtain jump conditions for shockwave structure calculations. Coupling the modified Rankine-Hugoniot equations with the Burnett equations, the shockwave structure in a weakly ionized gas flow was computed and analyzed for a wide range of free-stream Mach numbers ranging from 1.75 to 6.0, with ionization ratio ranges from 0 to 5 parts per million. Results indicated that the modified Rankine-Hugoniot equations for shockwave structures in weakly ionized gas are valid for a small range of ionization fractions at low free-stream Mach numbers. The jump conditions also depend on the value of free-stream pressure, temperature and density. The computed shockwave structure with ionization indicated that by the introduction of the weakly ionized gas particles in the main flow field, shockwave thickness was slightly increased and shockwave strength could be reduced.