Progress and Future Prospects for Particle-Based Simulation of Hypersonic Flow

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106455/1/AIAA2013-2613.pd

The ReaxFF reactive force-field : development, applications and future directions

The reactive force-field (ReaxFF) interatomic potential is a powerful computational tool for exploring, developing and optimizing material properties. Methods based on the principles of quantum mechanics (QM), while offering valuable theoretical guidance at the electronic level, are often too computationally intense for simulations that consider the full dynamic evolution of a system. Alternatively, empirical interatomic potentials that are based on classical principles require significantly fewer computational resources, which enables simulations to better describe dynamic processes over longer timeframes and on larger scales. Such methods, however, typically require a predefined connectivity between atoms, precluding simulations that involve reactive events. The ReaxFF method was developed to help bridge this gap. Approaching the gap from the classical side, ReaxFF casts the empirical interatomic potential within a bond-order formalism, thus implicitly describing chemical bonding without expensive QM calculations. This article provides an overview of the development, application, and future directions of the ReaxFF method

Dissociation and Internal Excitation of Molecular Nitrogen Due to N + N2 Collisions Using Direct Molecular Simulation

In this work we present a molecular level study of N2+N collisions, focusing on excitation of internal energy modes and non-equilibrium dissociation. The computation technique used here is the direct molecular simulation (DMS) method and the molecular interactions have been modeled using an abinitio potential energy surface (PES) developed at NASA's Ames Research Center. We carried out vibrational excitation calculations between 5000K and 30000K and found that the characteristic vibrational excitation time for the N + N2 process was an order of magnitude lower than that predicted by the Millikan and White correlation. It is observed that during vibrational excitation the high energy tail of the vibrational energy distribution gets over populated first and the lower energy levels get populated as the system evolves. It is found that the non-equilibrium dissociation rate coefficients for the N + N2 process are larger than those for the N2 + N2 process. This is attributed to the non-equilibrium vibrational energy distributions for the N + N2 process being less depleted than that for the N2 +N2 process. For an isothermal simulation we find that the probability of dissociation goes as 1/T(sub tr) for molecules with internal energy (epsilon(sub int)) less than approximately 9.9eV, while for molecules with epsilon (sub int) greater than 9.9eV the dissociation probability was weakly dependent on translational temperature of the system. We compared non-equilibrium dissociation rate coefficients and characteristic vibrational excitation times obtained by using the ab-initio PES developed at NASA's Ames Research Center to those obtained by using an ab-initio PES developed at the University of Minnesota. Good agreement was found between the macroscopic properties and molecular level description of the system obtained by using the two PESs

Comparison of Quantum Mechanical and Empirical Potential Energy Surfaces and Computed Rate Coefficients for N2 Dissociation

Comparisons are made between potential energy surfaces (PES) for N2 + N and N2 + N2 collisions and between rate coefficients for N2 dissociation that were computed using the quasiclassical trajectory method (QCT) on these PESs. For N2 + N we compare the Laganas empirical LEPS surface with one from NASA Ames Research Center based on ab initio quantum chemistry calculations. For N2 + N2 we compare two ab initio PESs (from NASA Ames and from the University of Minnesota). These use different methods for computing the ground state electronic energy for N4, but give similar results. Thermal N2 dissociation rate coefficients, for the 10,000K-30,000K temperature range, have been computed using each PES and the results are in excellent agreement. Quasi-stationary state (QSS) rate coefficients using both PESs have been computed at these temperatures using the Direct Molecular Simulation of Schwartentruber and coworkers. The QSS rate coefficients are up to a factor of 5 lower than the thermal ones and the thermal and QSS values bracket the results of shock-tube experiments. We conclude that the combination of ab initio quantum chemistry PESs and QCT calculations provides an attractive approach for the determination of accurate high-temperature rate coefficients for use in aerothermodynamics modeling

Comparison of Vibrational Relaxation Modeling for Strongly Non-Equilibrium Flows

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140421/1/6.2014-1076.pd

Ab initio based State Specific Modeling of N2+O System

Nitrogen and atomic oxygen play an important role in high temperature gas systems. Their Zeldovich reaction product nitric oxide not only affects aerothermal loads and emissions of hypersonic vehicles, but also has the possibility to influence the efficiency of hypersonic propulsion. Atomic oxygen induced nitrogen dissociation is another reaction mechanism of the N2+O system. However, due to the difficulty of conducting ground tests, there are no experimental data for this reaction now. Thermo-chemical nonequilibrium could make the problem more difficult since experiments could only track macroscopic gas properties instead of internal energy distribution. On the other hand, current reaction and internal energy exchange models are able to reproduce equilibrium condition. Whether their predictions at nonequilibrium conditions are reliable is still questionable. The work in this thesis employs quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) method based on an ab-initio chemistry calculated potential energy surface for the N2+O system. Through QCT calculations of different initial condition, high fidelity cross sections and rates are obtained. The cross sections are further used to generate a ME-QCT-VT model for vibrational excitation/relaxation, a state-specific exchange (SSE) model and a state-specific dissociation (SSD) model. These models are verified by comparison with direct QCT calculated rates and other experimental data or models. Although there are no flowfield calculations in this work, the models are able to be applied easily in DSMC calculations

Oxygen transport properties estimation by classical trajectory-direct simulation Monte Carlo

Coupling direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) simulations with classical trajectory calculations is a powerful tool to improve predictive capabilities of computational dilute gas dynamics. The considerable increase in computational effort outlined in early applications of the method can be compensated by running simulations on massively parallel computers. In particular, Graphics Processing Unit acceleration has been found quite effective in reducing computing time of classical trajectory (CT)-DSMC simulations. The aim of the present work is to study dilute molecular oxygen flows by modeling binary collisions, in the rigid rotor approximation, through an accurate Potential Energy Surface (PES), obtained by molecular beams scattering. The PES accuracy is assessed by calculating molecular oxygen transport properties by different equilibrium and non-equilibrium CT-DSMC based simulations that provide close values of the transport properties. Comparisons with available experimental data are presented and discussed in the temperature range 300–900 K, where vibrational degrees of freedom are expected to play a limited (but not always negligible) role