Piston driven converging shock waves in a stiffened gas

Abstract

We present that the problem of a one-dimensional (1D) cylindrically or spherically symmetric shock wave converging into an inviscid, ideal gas was first investigated by Guderley[Starke kugelige und zylinrische verdichtungsstosse in der nahe des kugelmitterpunktes bzw. Der zylinderachse,” Luftfahrtforschung 19, 302 (1942)]. In the time since, many authors have discussed the practical notion of how Guderley-like flows might be generated. One candidate is a constant velocity, converging “cylindrical or spherical piston,” giving rise to a converging shock wave in the spirit of its classical, planar counterpart. A limitation of pre-existing analyses along these lines is the restriction to flows in materials described by an ideal gas equation of state (EOS) constitutive law. This choice is of course necessary for the direct comparison with the classical Guderley solution, which also features an ideal gas EOS. However, the ideal gas EOS is limited in its utility in describing a wide variety of physical phenomena and, in particular, the shock compression of solid materials. This work is thus intended to provide an extension of previous work to a nonideal EOS. The stiff gas EOS is chosen as a logical starting point due to not only its close resemblance to the ideal gas law but also its relevance to the shock compression of various liquid and solid materials. Using this choice of EOS, the solution of a 1D planar piston problem is constructed and subsequently used as the lowest order term in a quasi-self-similar series expansion intended to capture both curvilinear and nonideal EOS effects. The solution associated with this procedure provides correction terms to the 1D planar solution so that the expected accelerating shock trajectory and nontrivially varying state variable profiles can be obtained. This solution is further examined in the limit as the converging shock wave approaches the 1D curvilinear origin. Lastly, given the stiff gas EOS is not otherwise expected to admit a Guderley-like solution when coupled to the inviscid Euler equations, this work thus provides the semianalytical limiting behavior of a flow that cannot be otherwise captured using self-similar analysis.