EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE FLIGHT OF A SPHERE IN WEAKLY IONIZED AIR

This paper reviews the author's research into the significant consequences of the discovery of anomalous shock wave parameters in weakly ionized gases (air, N2, CO2, Ar, Xe). These anomalous properties manifest themselves in a much greater sonic velocity in such media than in un-ionized gases at the same temperature. The degree of ionization is small (1(F5 to 10~ 6), and the "lifetime" of the unusual properties is sufficiently long (—20 ms), that the phenomenon has important practical applications in gas dynamics. With the aim both of estimating the efficiency of air ionization in influencing the aerodynamic characteristics of the flow around a flying body and of determining the resulting aerodynamic forces from flight in such a medium, free flight experiments were carried out in a ballistics range using spherical models with supersonic preionized air. Experiments