State specific vibrational relaxation and dissociation models for nitrogen in shock wave regions.

This work studies the interaction of the DSMC vibrational relaxation models and dissociation of molecular nitrogen at moderate Mach numbers where such processes are important. The total collision energy (TCE) and QCT models for the N2 dissociation reaction were considered and the dissociation from different N2 vibrational excited states was included in the simulations. It was found that the use of the QCT rates compared to the usual, TCE model gave a substantially higher degree of dissociation and smaller shock width due to the non-equilibrium distribution in the vibrational states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]