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On the dynamics of hot air plasmas related to lightning discharges: 1. Gas dynamics
Author(s) -
Ripoll JeanFrançois,
Zinn John,
Jeffery Christopher A.,
Colestock Patrick L.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1002/2013jd020067
Subject(s) - lightning (connector) , radiation , joule (programming language) , plasma , range (aeronautics) , physics , joule heating , computational physics , atomic physics , radiant energy , meteorology , mechanics , power (physics) , materials science , optics , thermodynamics , nuclear physics , quantum mechanics , composite material
In this paper, we first study the dynamics of hot shocks in air in cylindrical geometry coupled to multiband radiation transport and detailed air chemistry. The wide energy and length scale ranges which are covered herein includes and exceeds the ones of first and subsequent return strokes happening during lightning discharges. An emphasis is put on the NO x production and the optical power emitted by strong shocks as the ones generated by Joule heating of the air from intense current flows. The production rate of NO x , which is useful for atmospheric global modeling, is found to be between 4.5 × 10 16 and 8.6 × 10 16 molecules/J for all computed cases, which is in agreement with the literature. Two different radiation transport methods are used to characterize the variability of the results according to the radiation transport method. With the exact radiation solver, we show that between 15 and 40% of the energy is lost by radiation, with a percentage between 20 and 25% for averaged lightning energies. The maximal visible peak is between 7 × 10 8 W/m and 3 × 10 7 W/m obtained for, respectively, a 19 kJ/cm and a 28 J/cm energy input. The mean radiated powers in the visible range are found between 9 × 10 6 W/m and 2 × 10 5 W/m for the energies just mentioned. We discuss the agreement of these values with previous studies.