Thermionic Power Generation from Reentry Vehicles

Theoretical and experimental analyses are presented which describe the operation and characteristics of a hypersonic plasma generator for reentry vehicles. In Section I, the principle of the generator operation is outlined, previous results are briefly reviewed, and supporting arc tunnel experimental data are included. In Section II, the ionization enhancement by nose cone cesium seeding of the flow field is analyzed with special attention given to the nonequilibrium chemical reaction between cesium atoms and ionized air species. Section III extends the results of the previous two sections to reentry applications using several typical ballistic and super-orbital reentry trajectories.