During the operation of pressure hydraulic structures, there is an objective need to ensure their safety and reliability. In the case of non-stationary loads on hydraulic structures, they can be either seriously damaged or destroyed. One of the non-stationary effects can be considered a directed explosion on the body of a hydraulic structure or in the immediate vicinity of it. At significant Mach numbers, the processes of excitation of the internal degrees of freedom of molecules, ionization and dissociation of gas molecules, and their recombination occur behind the shock wave front. The course of these processes is due to the almost tenfold compression of the gas at the time of the explosion and it’s heating relative to the room temperature of the order of 104 K. The use of approximate and numerical methods is a consequence of the difficulties associated with the need to solve nonlinear equations of gas dynamics, with the simultaneous use of relaxation equations and equations of chemical kinetics at the same time.