Shock Waves in Gas-Particle Mixtures

Abstract

Shock waves in a dusty gas are analyzed numerically by taking into account a continuous distribution of particle sizes. A distribution function for the particle radii is introduced in order to describe the continuous particle sizes. The equations for the gas and the particles are solved by the Runge-Kutta-Gill method, where the integrations in these equations are calculated with Simpson's formula. It is made clear that the effects on the flow, or the flow structure, behind a shock front of the distribution function are very important. Also, the usual approximation for single sizes of particles will lead to poor results in many practical problems.