Transonic Shocks for 2-D Steady Exothermically Reacting Euler Flows in a Finite Nozzle

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence and positioning of transonic shocks in steady exothermically reacting Euler flows within a nearly flat nozzle, highlighting the effects of nozzle perturbations and chemical reactions.

Contribution

It introduces a free boundary problem for the linearized reacting Euler system to determine shock positions and establishes existence results using nonlinear iteration, considering reaction effects.

Findings

Exothermic reactions stabilize transonic shocks.

Shock position depends on nozzle perturbation and reaction rate.

Four interaction cases between nozzle geometry and reactions analyzed.

Abstract

This paper concerns the existence of transonic shocks for steady exothermically reacting Euler flows in an almost flat nozzle with the small rate of the exothermic reaction. One of the key points is to quantitatively determine the position of the shock front in the nozzle. We focus on the contributions of the perturbation of the flat nozzle and the exothermic reaction in determining the position of the shock front by comparing the orders of $\sigma$ and $\kappa$, where $\sigma$ represents the scale of the perturbation of the flat nozzle and $\kappa$ the rate of the exothermic reaction. To this end, a free boundary problem for the linearized reacting Euler system is proposed to catch an approximating position of the shock front as well as the associated approximating shock solution, with which the existence of a shock solution close to it can be established via a nonlinear iteration scheme. One of the key steps is solving the nonlinear equation derived from the solvability condition for the elliptic sub-problem in the domain of the subsonic flow behind the shock front, which determines the free boundary of the proposed problem. Four typical cases are analyzed which describe possible interactions between the geometry of the nozzle boundary and the exothermic reaction. The results also manifest that exothermic reaction has a stabilization effect on transonic shocks in the nozzles.