Modeling Atomic Oxygen Sensor Contamination From Desorption Using Direct Simulation Monte Carlo

摘要

Atomic oxygen sensor contamination via desorption of water vapor from sounding rocket surfaces constitutes a potentially severe compromise of sensor measurement accuracy. The present study utilizes the direct simulation Monte Carlo method in an attempt to model the trajectories of injected water molecules and quantify the probability of sensor contamination. The results run contradictory to previous analytical results, and show, a strong dependence on flow-field velocity and mean free path.