Shock Tube Studies of Radiative Transport in an Argon Plasma

Abstract

An experimental study was made of thermal transport at the stagnation point of a 1‐in.‐diam hemisphere‐cylinder model immersed in a high enthalpy flow of shock‐heated argon. Emphasis was placed on the separation of convective and radiative transport. Variation of operating parameters gave regimes in which (1) the heat transfer was almost wholly of the aerodynamic or convective type, or (2) both convective and radiative heat transfer had to be considered. Separate measurements of the total heat transfer and of the radiative component permitted separation of the former into convective and radiative parts. A limited comparison is made between the convective results and those obtained earlier for unionized argon. The radiative transport is compared with that obtained theoretically from the Kramers bremsstrahlung theory as applied to an argon plasma.