Non-polytropic effect on shock-induced phase transitions in a hard-sphere system

By adopting a simplified model of a non-polytropic hard-sphere system where heat capacity depends on the temperature, we demonstrate the importance of non-polytropic effect on the shock-induced phase transitions. We show explicitly that with the increase of the shock strength the perturbed temperature (the temperature after a shock) increases and the vibrational modes are gradually excited, and as a result, shock-induced phase transitions are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the phase transitions observed in a simple polytropic model. The effect on the admissibility (stability) of a shock wave is also analyzed.