A Model System of Mixed Ionized Gas Dynamics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study a one dimensional model system of equations for ionized gas dynamics at high temperature where the gas is a mixture of two kinds of monatomic gas. In addition to the mass density, pressure, temperature and particle velocity, degrees of ionization of both gases are also involved. By assuming that the local thermal equilibrium is attained, Saha's ionization equations are added. Thus the equations are supplemented by the first and second law of thermodynamics, a single equation of state and, in addition, a set of thermodynamic equations. The equations constitute a strictly hyperbolic system, which guarantees that the initial value problem is well-posed locally in time for sufficiently smooth initial data. However the geometric properties of the system are rather complicated: in particular, we prove the existence of a region where convexity (genuine nonlinearity) fails for forward and backward characteristic fields. Also we study thermodynamic properties of shock waves by a detailed analysis of the Hugoniot locus, which is used in a mathematical study of existence and uniqueness of solutions to the shock tube problem.