Convergence of Strong Shock in a Van der Waals Gas

Strong cylindrical and spherical shock waves, collapsing at the center (or axis) of symmetry, are studied for a Van der Waals gas. The perturbation technique applied in this paper provides a global solution to the implosion problem, yielding the results for Guderley’s local self‐similar solution, which is valid only in the vicinity of the center/axis of implosion. The similarity exponents are found along with the corresponding amplitudes in the vicinity of the shock‐collapse. The flow parameters and the shock trajectory have been computed for different values of the adiabatic coefficient and the Van der Waals excluded volume.