TABLE OF CONTENTS Equilibrium: Any condition in which all acting influences are cancelled by others resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969
Finally, after four chapters of basic physics and chemistry, we are going to look at some high-temperature gas dynamic flows. But we are not going off the deep end and dealing with all kinds of complexities; rather, in this chapter we are going to examine some basic high-speed flows such as shock waves, nozzle flows, flows over cones, and flows over blunt-nosed bodies. You can hardly get more basic. These flows are the bread and butter of classical compressible flow, except here we examine how these classic flows are changed by high-temperature effects. In fact, the underlying question addressed throughout the remainder of this book is: how do the high-temperature physics and chemistry discussed in the preceding four chapters affect and change some otherwise familiar and classic flowfields? The answers will be graphic, sometimes unexpected, and always fascinating.
As with all major subjects, we cannot do the whole thing at once. So in this chapter we take our first step into the study of high-temperature gas dynamics by assuming that both vibrational and chemical equilibrium exist throughout the flowfield equilibrium flows. In the whole panoply of high-temperature gas dynamics, equilibrium flows are usually the most straightforward to calculate and understand. So we start here. Ready set go!
It is worthwhile at this...
