Evolution of acceleration waves in non-ideal relaxing gas subjected to the transverse magnetic field

Abstract

Using the characteristics of the governing quasi-linear system as the referencing coordinate system in the presence of a transverse magnetic field, the evolution of acceleration waves in a non-ideal relaxing gas has been examined along its characteristic path. It is demonstrated that a linear solution in the characteristic plane can behave non-linearly in the physical plane. We have determined the critical amplitude of the initial disturbance; if the initial amplitude of the compressive disturbance is greater than the critical value, the disturbance must culminate into a shock wave, while if it is less than this value, the disturbance will decay, and no shock formation will happen. We establish the criteria for shock generation and the transport equation that governs the development of weak shock waves. Acceleration waves having planar and cylindrical symmetry are analyzed as their steepening, or flattening is investigated as a function of the non-idealness parameter, relaxation parameter, adiabatic index, and magnetic field strength parameter. In both the planar and cylindrical symmetries, the shock formation process is slowed by increasing the relaxation parameter as well as the magnetic field parameter but accelerated by non-idealness and the adiabatic index. In the ideal gas case with adiabatic exponent \(\gamma = 2\), the magnetic field has no effect on the steepening or flattening of the wavefront in both the planar and cylindrical symmetries.