Numerical study of the interaction of supersonic viscous gas jets in the presence of nonequilibrium physicochemical processes

The interaction of supersonic jets of hydrogen and fluorine in the presence of an external coherent radiation field is investigated as a model of the flow process in a continuous molecular HF chemical laser amplifier. Calculations are carried out within the framework of the complete set of Navier-Stokes equations, for the numerical integration of which an implicit multistep finite-difference decoupling scheme is used. It is shown that with a small content of inert diluent in the mixture, even in the case of ideally expanded reagent jets, large transverse pressure gradients are induced in the flow by the strong heat release associated with the chemical reactions. The mechanism and degree of influence of the non-ideal-expansion parameter of the jets on the rates of the physicochemical processes and the energy characteristics of the amplifier is investigated.