On the dynamics of hot air plasmas related to lightning discharges: 1. Gas dynamics

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Abstract 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 NOx 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 NOx, which is useful for atmospheric global modeling, is found to be between 4.5 × 1016 and 8.6 × 1016 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 × 108 W/m and 3 × 107 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 × 106 W/m and 2 × 105 W/m for the energies just mentioned. We discuss the agreement of these values with previous studies.

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