On cylindrically converging shock waves shaped by obstacles

Motivated by recent experiments, numerical simulations of cylindrically converging shock waves were performed. The converging shocks impinged upon a set of 0–16 regularly space obstacles. For more than two obstacles the resulting diffracted shock fronts formed polygonal shaped patterns near the point of focus. The maximum pressure and temperature as a function of the number of obstacles were studied. The self-similar behavior of cylindrical, triangular and square-shaped shocks was also investigated.