Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Absolute Number Density Measurements Of Atomic Species In Air And Nitrogen Plasmas, Jeffrey C. Schindler

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

A vehicle reentering Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic velocities violently compresses the air in front of it, creating a shell of plasma at the surface. This plasma imparts energy onto the vehicle's surface via convective, radiative, and chemical heating. Currently, large uncertainties in measurements of surface reaction rates lead to over-designed thermal protection systems. Improvements in the precision of these measurements could substantially decrease the weight of the heat shield, freeing up space for additional fuel or human/scientific payload. This work aims to improve current methods for measurements of atomic number densities in plasmas, so that they may be applied to …