Theory of the shock process in dense fluids

A shock is assumed to be a steady plane wave, and irreversible thermodynamics is assumed valid. The fluid is characterized by heat conduction and by viscous or viscoelastic response, according to the strain rate. It is shown that setting the viscosity zero produces a solution which constitutes a lower bound through the shock process for the shear stress, and upper bounds for the temperature, entropy, pressure, and heat current. It is shown that there exists an upper bound to the dynamic stresses which can be achieved during shock compression, that this bound corresponds to a purely elastic response of the fluid, and that solution for the shock process along this bound constitutes lower bounds for the temperature and entropy. It is shown that a continuous steady shock is possible only if the heat current is positive and the temperature is an increasing function of compression almost everywhere. In his theory of shocks in gases, Rayleigh showed that there is a maximum shock strength for which a continuous steady solution can exist with heat conduction but without viscosity. Two more limits are shown to exist for dense fluids, based on the fluid response in the leading edge of the shock: for shocks at the overdriven threshold and above, no solution is possible without heat transport; for shocks near the viscous fluid limit and above, viscous fluid theory is not valid, and the fluid response in the leading edge of the shock is approximately that of a nonplastic solid. The viscous fluid limit is estimated to be 13 kbar for water and 690 kbar for mercury