Geometrical shock dynamics applied to condensed phase materials

Taylor blast wave (TBW) theory and geometrical shock dynamics (GSD) theory describe a radially expanding shock wave front through an inert material, typically an ideal gas, in the strong blast wave limit and weak acoustic limit respectively. We simulate a radially expanding blast shock in air using a hydrodynamic simulation code and numerically describe the intermediate region between these two limits. We test our description of the intermediate shock phase through a two-dimensional simulation of the Bryson and Gross experiment. We then apply the principles of GSD to materials that follow the Mie–Gruneisen equation of state, such as plastics and metals, and derive an equation that accurately relates the acceleration, velocity and curvature of the shock through these materials. Along with detonation shock dynamics (DSD), which describes detonation shock propagation through high explosive fluids, we develop a hybrid DSD/GSD model for the simulation of heterogeneous explosives. This model enables computationally efficient simulation of the shock front in high explosive/inert mixtures consisting of simple or complex geometric configurations. We simulate an infinite two-dimensional slab consisting of one half explosive, PBXN-9, and one half aluminium and model the boundary angle conditions using shock polar analysis. We also simulate a series of high explosive unit cells embedded with aluminium spherical particles, and we compare the propagation of the detonation shock front with a direct numerical simulation performed with the ALE3D code.

Geometrical shock dynamics for magnetohydrodynamic fast shocks

We describe a formulation of two-dimensional geometrical shock dynamics (GSD) suitable for ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fast shocks under magnetic fields of general strength and orientation. The resulting area–Mach-number–shock-angle relation is then incorporated into a numerical method using pseudospectral differentiation. The MHD-GSD model is verified by comparison with results from nonlinear finite-volume solution of the complete ideal MHD equations applied to a shock implosion flow in the presence of an oblique and spatially varying magnetic field ahead of the shock. Results from application of the MHD-GSD equations to the stability of fast MHD shocks in two dimensions are presented. It is shown that the time to formation of triple points for both perturbed MHD and gas-dynamic shocks increases as $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}^{-1}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ is a measure of the initial Mach-number perturbation. Symmetry breaking in the MHD case is demonstrated. In cylindrical converging geometry, in the presence of an azimuthal field produced by a line current, the MHD shock behaves in the mean as in Pullin et al. (Phys. Fluids, vol. 26, 2014, 097103), but suffers a greater relative pressure fluctuation along the shock than the gas-dynamic shock.