The reactive thermal conductivity for a two-temperature plasma

Reliable plasma thermodynamic and transport properties are required for the numerical simulation of thermal plasma systems. Although many databases for the thermal plasma properties at the local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) state have been compiled, the database for the two-temperature (2-T) plasma is still far from completeness. There exits considerable confusion in the literature concerning how to calculate the thermodynamic and transport properties, including the reactive thermal conductivity, for the 2-T plasma. In this paper, a detailed derivation for the reactive thermal conductivity of the 2-T argon plasma is presented using two different approaches. The present calculated results for the reactive thermal conductivity are identical to those due to Hsu [5] for the special case of LTE plasma, but are different when the electron temperature is higher than the heavy-particle temperature, the difference increases with increasing electron/heavy-particle temperature ratio, theta(= T-e/T-h), and becomes quite significant at high theta. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.