Aspects of planar, oblique and interacting shock waves in an ideal dissociating gas

We develop a compact dimensionless framework for the analysis of canonical thermo-chemical nonequilibrium flow fields involving normal, oblique and interacting shock waves. Discontinuous solutions of the conservation equations are coupled with thermodynamic and kinetic models for an ideal dissociating gas. Convenient forms are provided for the variation of the relevant dimensionless parameters across shock waves in dissociating gases. The treatment is carried through in a consistent manner for the pressure-flow deflection angle plane representation of shock wave interaction problems. The contribution of the current paper is a careful nondimensionalization of the problem that yields a tractable formulation and allows results with considerable generality to be obtained. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.