Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2006
We present the results of numerical computations of the refraction of a plane shock wave at a CO2/CH4 gas interface. The numerical method was an operator split version of a second-order Godunov method, with adaptive grid refinement. We solved the unsteady, two-dimensional, compressible, Euler equations numerically, assuming perfect gas equations of state, and compared our results with the experiments of Abd-El-Fattah & Henderson. Good agreement was usually obtained, especially when the contamination of the CH4 by the CO2 was taken into account. Remaining discrepancies were ascribed to the uncertainties in measuring certain wave angles, due to sharp curvature, poor definition, or short length of the waves at large angles of incidence. All the main features of the regular and irregular refractions were resolved numerically for shock strengths that were weak, intermediate, or strong. These include free precursor shock waves in the intermediate and strong cases, evanescent (smeared out) compressions in the weak case, and the appearance of an extra expansion wave in the bound precursor refraction (BPR). The structure of a BPR was elucidated for the first time.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.