The numerical solution of the unsteady expansion of a gas into a near vacuum

Abstract

In this paper we consider the problem of the unsteady one-dimensional expansion of an initially uniform source gas into a non-uniform low density ambient atmosphere. We make a numerical study of the finite time solution of the contact front-primary shock regime using a particle path formulation of the characteristic equations of inviscid gas dynamics. The numerical method employed is a slightly modified version of that due to Hartree and we compare our results with the known asymptotic solutions.