Assessment of Q-K model for nitrogen and oxygen dissociation-recombination

Total collision energy (TCE) model is widely used in the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method for reactive flows. A numerical assessment of quantum-kinetic (Q-K) model has been conducted in this paper by comparing with the TCE chemical model, and the differences between the two chemical models have been illustrated particularly. The result indicates that the prediction of the Q-K model has good agreement with the theoretical value while the TCE model underestimates the nitrogen dissociation degree at low temperature. When the nonequilibrium effect on the dissociation rate is taken into consideration, the Q-K model has highly similar performance as the Park's two-temperature model while the TCE model overestimates this effect compared with the Park's model. In addition, the computational result indicates that the predicted nonequilibrium dissociation rate of the TCE model is closer to that of the Park's two temperature model than that of the Q-K model.