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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Introduction to Shock Waves and Shock Wave Research

M-9 and a number of other organizations at LANL and elsewhere study materials in dynamic processes. Often, this is described as “shock wave research,” but in reality is broader than is implied by that term. Most of our work is focused on dynamic compression and associated phenomena, but you will find a wide variety of things we do that, while related, are not simple compression of materials, but involve a much richer variety of phenomena. This tutorial will introduce some of the underlying physics involved in this work, some of the more common types of phenomena we study, and common techniques. However, the list will not be exhaustive by any means.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

WHEN SHOCK WAVES COLLIDE

Supersonic outflows from objects as varied as stellar jets, massive stars, and novae often exhibit multiple shock waves that overlap one another. When the intersection angle between two shock waves exceeds a critical value, the system reconfigures its geometry to create a normal shock known as a Mach stem where the shocks meet. Mach stems are important for interpreting emission-line images of shocked gas because a normal shock produces higher postshock temperatures, and therefore a higher-excitation spectrum than does an oblique shock. In this paper, we summarize the results of a series of numerical simulations and laboratory experiments designed to quantify how Mach stems behave in supersonic plasmas that are the norm in astrophysical flows. The experiments test analytical predictions for critical angles where Mach stems should form, and quantify how Mach stems grow and decay as intersection angles between the incident shock and a surface change. While small Mach stems are destroyed by surface irregularities and subcritical angles, larger ones persist in these situations and can regrow if the intersection angle changes to become more favorable. The experimental and numerical results show that although Mach stems occur only over a limited range of intersection angles and size scales, within these ranges they are relatively robust, and hence are a viable explanation for variable bright knots observed in Hubble Space Telescope images at the intersections of some bow shocks in stellar jets.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

TRIGGERING COLLAPSE OF THE PRESOLAR DENSE CLOUD CORE AND INJECTING SHORT-LIVED RADIOISOTOPES WITH A SHOCK WAVE. II. VARIED SHOCK WAVE AND CLOUD CORE PARAMETERS

A variety of stellar sources have been proposed for the origin of the short-lived radioisotopes that existed at the time of the formation of the earliest solar system solids, including Type II supernovae (SNe), asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and super-AGB stars, and Wolf-Rayet star winds. Our previous adaptive mesh hydrodynamics models with the FLASH2.5 code have shown which combinations of shock wave parameters are able to simultaneously trigger the gravitational collapse of a target dense cloud core and inject significant amounts of shock wave gas and dust, showing that thin SN shocks may be uniquely suited for the task. However, recent meteoritical studies have weakened the case for a direct SN injection to the presolar cloud, motivating us to re-examine a wider range of shock wave and cloud core parameters, including rotation, in order to better estimate the injection efficiencies for a variety of stellar sources. We find that SN shocks remain as the most promising stellar source, though planetary nebulae resulting from AGB star evolution cannot be conclusively ruled out. Wolf-Rayet (WR) star winds, however, are likely to lead to cloud core shredding, rather than to collapse. Injection efficiencies can be increased when the cloud is rotating about an axis aligned with the direction of the shock wave, by as much as a factor of {approx}10. The amount of gas and dust accreted from the post-shock wind can exceed that injected from the shock wave, with implications for the isotopic abundances expected for a SN source.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Thermal transport in shock wave–compressed solids using pulsed laser heating

A pulsed laser heating method was developed for determining thermal transport properties of solids under shock-wave compression. While the solid is compressed, a laser deposits a known amount of heat onto the sample surface, which is held in the shocked state by a transparent window. The heat from the laser briefly elevates the surface temperature and then diffuses into the interior via one-dimensional heat conduction. The thermal effusivity is determined from the time history of the resulting surface temperature pulse, which is recorded with optical pyrometry. Thermal effusivity is the square root of the product of thermal conductivity and volumetric heat capacity and is the key thermal transport parameter for relating the surface temperature to the interior temperature of the sample in a dynamic compression experiment. Therefore, this method provides information that is needed to determine the thermodynamic state of the interior of a compressed metal sample from a temperature measurement at the surface. The laser heat method was successfully demonstrated on tin that was shock compressed with explosives to a stress and temperature of ∼25 GPa and ∼1300 K. In this state, tin was observed to have a thermal effusivity of close to twice its ambient value. The implications on determining the interior shock wave temperature of tin are discussed.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2014

The ignition of carbon detonations via converging shock waves in white dwarfs

The progenitor channel responsible for the majority of Type Ia supernovae is still uncertain. One emergent scenario involves the detonation of a He-rich layer surrounding a C/O white dwarf, which sends a shock wave into the core. The quasi-spherical shock wave converges and strengthens at an off-center location, forming a second, C-burning, detonation that disrupts the whole star. In this paper, we examine this second detonation of the double detonation scenario using a combination of analytic and numeric techniques. We perform a spatially resolved study of the imploding shock wave and outgoing detonation and calculate the critical imploding shock strengths needed to achieve a core C detonation. We find that He detonations in recent two-dimensional simulations yield converging shock waves that are strong enough to ignite C detonations in high-mass C/O cores, with the caveat that a truly robust answer requires multi-dimensional detonation initiation calculations. We also find that convergence-driven detonations in low-mass C/O cores and in O/Ne cores are harder to achieve and are perhaps unrealized in standard binary evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Finite Mach number spherical shock wave, application to shock ignition

A converging and diverging spherical shock wave with a finite initial Mach number M{sub s0} is described by using a perturbative approach over a small parameter M{sub s}{sup −2}. The zeroth order solution is the Guderley's self-similar solution. The first order correction to this solution accounts for the effects of the shock strength. Whereas it was constant in the Guderley's asymptotic solution, the amplification factor of the finite amplitude shock Λ(t)∝dU{sub s}/dR{sub s} now varies in time. The coefficients present in its series form are iteratively calculated so that the solution does not undergo any singular behavior apart from the position of the shock. The analytical form of the corrected solution in the vicinity of singular points provides a better physical understanding of the finite shock Mach number effects. The correction affects mainly the flow density and the pressure after the shock rebound. In application to the shock ignition scheme, it is shown that the ignition criterion is modified by more than 20% if the fuel pressure prior to the final shock is taken into account. A good agreement is obtained with hydrodynamic simulations using a Lagrangian code.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

Observation of Shock Waves in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas

We study collisions between two strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas clouds. We observe exotic nonlinear hydrodynamic behavior, distinguished by the formation of a very sharp and stable density peak as the clouds collide and subsequent evolution into a boxlike shape. We model the nonlinear dynamics of these collisions by using quasi-1D hydrodynamic equations. Our simulations of the time-dependent density profiles agree very well with the data and provide clear evidence of shock wave formation in this universal quantum hydrodynamic system.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2011

Velocity and Timing of Multiple Spherically Converging Shock Waves in Liquid Deuterium

The fuel entropy and required drive energy for an inertial confinement fusion implosion are set by a sequence of shocks that must be precisely timed to achieve ignition. This Letter reports measurements of multiple spherical shock waves in liquid deuterium that facilitate timing inertial confinement fusion shocks to the required precision. These experiments produced the highest shock velocity observed in liquid deuterium (U{sub s}=135 km/s at {approx}2500 GPa) and also the first observation of convergence effects on the shock velocity. Simulations model the shock-timing results well when a nonlocal transport model is used in the coronal plasma.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Numerical analysis of three complex three-dimensional shock wave / turbulent boundary layer interaction flows

A set of Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations with turbulence closure provided by the Spalart-Allmaras (SA) model have been carried out for prediction of shock-induced three-dimensional (3D) turbulent separated flows. The experimental data for different aerodynamic test configurations have been used for assessing credibility of the numerical method employed. Particularly, shock wave / turbulent boundary layer interactions (SWTBLI) in the vicinity of an asymmetric sharp double-fin (DF) with different (7° and 11°) deflection angles mounted on a flat plate and two conically sharp cylindrical bodies at varying interbody distances and nose cone angles 60° and 40° mounted over a flat plate at freestream Mach number 4, as well as a transonic fan stage operating in the near-stall regime are considered. The gas dynamic structure and topology of 3D separated flows, surface flow patterns, and pressure distributions as well as body aerodynamic force prediction are analyzed. A transonic fan stage operating in the near-stall regime and a possibility of applying flow control is investigated. High Performance Computing was employed to make high resolution computations of these flows possible, and advanced 3D visualization techniques were employed in order to improve understanding of the separating flow phenomena.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Chiral Shock Waves

We study the shock waves in relativistic chiral matter. We argue that the conventional Rankine-Hugoinot relations are modified due to the presence of chiral transport phenomena. We show that the entropy discontinuity in a weak shock wave is quadratic in the pressure discontinuity when the effect of chiral transport becomes sufficiently large. We also show that rarefaction shock waves, which do not exist in usual nonchiral fluids, can appear in chiral matter. The direction of shock wave propagation is found to be completely determined by the direction of the vorticity and the chirality of fermions. These features are exemplified by shock propagation in dense neutrino matter in the hydrodynamic regime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗