Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2006
The ionization relaxation and radiative cooling of weakly unsteady shock waves in krypton and xenon is examined. We find that, besides radiation energy loss, the shock-tube boundary layers and shock attenuation strongly influence the radiative-cooling region. Calculations taking these effects into account are in excellent agreement with experimental values of electron densities. The contribution of line radiation to total radiation energy loss is obtained, and amounts to about 54% at temperatures of 10 000 K in krypton. For xenon, first comparisons indicate a similar result.