Determination of the catalytic activity of materials by solving the equations of a nonequilibrium multicomponent boundary layer on a flat plate

A method is presented for determining the dependence of the probability of heterogeneous recombination $\gamma_w$ from results of measurements of the heat flux $Q_w$ to the surface of a catalytic sensor exposed to a pulsed supersonic flow of gas dissociated by an incident shock wave propagating in a shock tube. It is shown that the accuracy of the determination of $\gamma_w$ depends not only on the accuracy of the measurements in the experiment, but also on the results of mathematical modeling of the flow of the dissociated gas over the surface of the body. Results from an analysis of an experiment are presented.