Sensitivity analysis for chemical laser design: a model problem

Modeling the performance of chemical lasers requires coupling an analysis of the chemically reacting flow to one that predicts the laser intensity in the optical cavity. The continuous sensitivity equation method (CSEM), applied to such coupled systems, naturally leads to a coupled system of linear equations for the sensitivities. We introduce a model problem, based on one-dimensional gas dynamics with heat addition, to study this coupling. Numerical studies indicate that a Gauss-Seidel blocking of the sensitivity equations permits the re-use of single-discipline sensitivity procedures in such problems with multi-disciplinary physics