Modified Marrone–Treanor Model: Parameterization and Benchmarking for Five-Species Air

We present updated parameters for five-species air (Formula: see text, Formula: see text, NO, N, and O) reactions to be used with the modified Marrone–Treanor two-temperature model. The vibrational relaxation and chemical reaction rates are derived from quasi-classical trajectory calculations and direct molecular simulations using ab initio potential energy surfaces. The resulting model enables efficient computational fluid dynamics simulations of nonequilibrium air chemistry in hypersonic flows. We show that the model reproduces direct molecular simulation benchmark solutions with high accuracy in zero-dimensional heat baths representative of strong nonequilibrium postshock conditions. The model’s analytical expressions for dissociation rate coefficients and vibrational energy change per reaction ensure that the correct amount of energy is transferred between vibrational and trans-rotational modes. Detailed balance is imposed for three-body recombination reactions, and our simulations exhibit quasi-steady-state dissociation rates and a proper approach to thermochemical equilibrium. In direct comparison with the Park Formula: see text model, the modified Marrone–Treanor model predicts significantly slower conversion of Formula: see text into N below 10,000 K and significantly greater NO production at all temperatures. This is likely due to its significantly higher Zeldovich reaction rates compared to Park’s original ones.