State-to-state model for DSMC simulation of internal energy exchange in hypersonic flows

A reduced state-to-state model is to be applied to the problem of internal energy exchange and molecular dissociation in nitrogen gas. The aim is to implement this model within the framework of the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. In order to simulate inelastic collision processes within DSMC, a detailed knowledge of the reaction cross sections as a function of collision energy is needed. In this work, these cross sections are meant to be extracted from available temperature-dependent rate coefficients. Due to the high computational cost of simulating the full range of inelastic collision processes in the N₂ - N system (≈ 10⁶), a reduced model with fewer internal levels (e.g. bin method) will be considered.