Numerical study of energy conversion process in air-breathing laser propulsion

Abstract

An energy source produced by a TEA CO₂ laser operated at 10.6 μm primarily was considered as a key essential in this paper to describe the energy conversion process in air-breathing laser propulsion in the round. Some secondary factors were ignored when three independent modules, a ray transmission module, an energy source term module and a fluid mechanics module, were established by a simultaneous laser radiation transportation equation and a fluid mechanics equation set-up. The incident laser beam after being reflected by the optical system or transmitted by it was simulated based on a certain geometrical optics method named ray tracing. Thus, coherent superimposition could be avoided when describing the laser beam focusing process, and so could the solving process of the laser wave equation at the non-paraxial condition. The calculated results were in good agreement with those of theoretical analysis and experiments.