Formation and Decay of Shock Waves

Abstract

In the previous five chapters, the close analogy between one-dimensional conventional gas dynamics and the particular class of hydromagnetic flows under consideration has been utilized to extend a rather large part of the linearized theory of the former to the magnetic case. The analogy may be exploited in yet another problem of interest, namely, the formation and decay of weak shock waves. This is due to the fact that in common with conventional gas dynamic shock waves, the entropy change across magnetohydrodynamic shock waves involves only terms of the third and higher order in the shock strength [1]. With this fact as a basis and because of the existence of generalized Riemann invariants and simple normal shock relations, it is possible to extend the Friedrichs theory [46] of the formation and decay of shock waves to the magnetic case with little difficulty. Since the generalized Riemann invariants and an exact solution for simple wave flow are known explicitly for a monatomic fluid, the discussion will be limited to a monatomic fluid in order to simplify the expository analysis of this chapter.KeywordsShock WaveRarefaction WaveSimple WaveWave ZoneShock StrengthThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.