Shock dynamics of strong imploding cylindrical and spherical shock waves with non-ideal gas effects

• Analytic solutions are obtained for flow field behind imploding shock in real gas.
• Shock velocity, pressure and entropy increase as shock focuses at centre.
• Entropy increases with non-idealness parameter whereas compressibility decreases.
• Pressure and entropy decrease with adiabatic index while compressibility increases.
• Trends of variations of flow quantities remain unaffected by non-ideal gas effects.

In this paper, the generalized analytical solution for one dimensional adiabatic flow behind the strong imploding shock waves propagating in a non-ideal gas is obtained by using Whitham’s geometrical shock dynamics theory. Landau and Lifshitz’s equation of state for non-ideal gas and Anand’s generalized shock jump relations are taken into consideration to explore the effects due to an increase in (i) the propagation distance from the centre of convergence, (ii) the non-idealness parameter and, (iii) the adiabatic index, on the shock velocity, pressure, density, particle velocity, sound speed, adiabatic compressibility and the change in entropy across the shock front. The findings provided a clear picture of whether and how the non-idealness parameter and the adiabatic index affect the flow field behind the strong imploding shock front.