Oblique magnetohydrodynamic shock wave decay (Q804419)

This paper is devoted to a study of the decay of an oblique magnetohydrodynamic shock wave produced when an originally uniform shock wave, which propagates into quiescent fluid, intersects a centered rarefaction wave. The solution generalizes the solution for a normal magnetohydrodynamic shock wave [(*) the author, ibid. 40, No.4, 501-509 (1989; Zbl 0688.76048)] in a form which includes that solution as well as the solution for conventional nonconducting flow as special limiting cases. It is assumed that the magnetic field and particle velocity vectors have two nonzero components; the addition of third components to these vectors would add virtually no new information, since they necessarily must be proportional to the second components. The physical problem and the method of analysis are essentially the same as used in the previous paper (*). A particular solution of the nonisentropic equations of motion is obtained through the use of a modified hodograph transformation and used to obtain an approximate representation of the shock path, valid for relatively weak shocks, in the region of interaction. Since an oblique magnetic field is utilized, both slow and fast shocks are possible, and the analysis is valid for both types of shocks. Shock wave decay has, of course, been investigated extensively using various approximate analytical techniques. Since a history of the problem was given in the previous paper (*), it is not necessary to repeat it here.