An improved equation of state for air plasma simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new, accurate, and computationally efficient equation of state for partially ionised air plasma, validated through simulations of lightning strikes on aircraft with good agreement to experimental data.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel tabulated equation of state for air plasma based on a 19-species model, enabling efficient and accurate simulations of plasma interactions.

Findings

Accurate thermodynamic profiles near material surfaces.

Validated against experimental results for plasma and arc-material interactions.

Efficient interpolation method improves simulation performance.

Abstract

This work is concerned with the development of a novel, accurate equation of state for describing partially ionised air plasma in local thermodynamic equilibrium. One key application for this new equation of state is the simulation of lightning strike on aircraft. Due to the complexities of species ionisation and interaction, although phenomenological curve fitting of thermodynamic properties is possible, these curves are intractable for practical numerical simulation. The large difference in size of the parameters (many orders of magnitude) and complexity of the equations means they are not straightforward to invert for conversion between thermodynamic variables. The approach of this paper is to take an accurate 19-species phenomenological model, and use this to generate a tabulated data set. Coupled with a suitable interpolation procedure this offers an accurate and computationally efficient technique for simulating partially ionised air plasma. The equation of state is implemented within a multiphysics methodology which can solve for two-way coupling between a plasma arc and an elastoplastic material substrate. The implementation is validated against experimental results, both for a single material plasma, and an arc coupled to a substrate. It is demonstrated that accurate, oscillation-free thermodynamic profiles can be obtained, with good results even close to material surfaces.