Dissipative Instability of Shock Waves

A new condition is obtained for the linear instability of a plane front of an intense shock wave in an arbitrary medium, which is determined by the finiteness of the viscosity. It is shown that the shock front instability occurs due to dissipative instability of the flow behind the front, which is analogous to the flow instability in the boundary layer. It is found that in the low-viscosity limit, one-dimensional longitudinal perturbations increase much faster than two-dimensional (corrugation) perturbations. The results are compared with the available data of experimental observation and numerical simulation of instability of shock waves. The comparison shows a better agreement between the new absolute shock instability as compared to the condition of such instability in the classical D'yakov theory disregarding viscosity.