The interest in plasma research and modelling is growing due to its wide range of applications in academia and industry as well as military purposes. This is particularly the case for electric discharges as they can be obtained easily, and thus are one of the most commonly used plasma generation techniques. The present work combines common electric discharge models with detailed models for nonequilibrium aerothermodynamics and chemical kinetics. These modelling subjects are usually treated separately, and the challenge of combining the two concepts is highly topical. Therefore, in this thesis, the development of a physicochemical model and its subsequent numerical implementation for the simulation of partially ionized high-speed flows in the state of nonequilibrium and in the presence of electric and magnetic fields are carried out. This allows detailed numerical investigations on different types of electric discharges and improves the capabilities to analyse ionized gases in general. The physicochemical model developed is based on the single-fluid assumption and takes the chemical and thermodynamic nonequilibria in the gas mixture into account. Therefore, the vibrational and electronic excitation of particles are modelled. This allows the use of more sophisticated kinetic mechanisms for high-enthalpy flows, leading to more accurate results for the chemical composition of the plasma, and thus for its thermodynamic and transport properties. Particular attention is paid to the validity of the assumptions and simplifications used in this work. Due to the high complexity of the processes within the nonequilibrium regions near the electrodes and their small dimensions compared to the characteristic length of the system, the modelling of the plasma nonequilibrium layers is simplified. For the numerical implementation of the physicochemical model the open-source computational fluid dynamics framework OpenFOAM is used. To validate the numerical solver, a three-dimensional arc discharge on the surface of a wedge in a supersonic flow is numerically calculated. The simulation results provide a detailed picture of the physicochemical processes to be investigated. The numerical results show a fair agreement with the experimental measurements and theoretical values. Possibilities for improving prediction accuracy and suggestions for further research are discussed in detail.    «

The interest in plasma research and modelling is growing due to its wide range of applications in academia and industry as well as military purposes. This is particularly the case for electric discharges as they can be obtained easily, and thus are one of the most commonly used plasma generation techniques. The present work combines common electric discharge models with detailed models for nonequilibrium aerothermodynamics and chemical kinetics. These modelling subjects are usually treated separ...    »