The shape of a diffracting shock wave

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental study of the shape of a shock diffracting around a corner made up of two plane walls, for corner angles from 15 to 165° (in 15° steps) and shock Mach numbers from M 0 = 1·0 to 4·0. The results are compared with profiles determined from the diffraction theory of Whitham (1957, 1959). The agreement is shown to be good for an incident shock Mach number of 3·0, and fair in other cases. The behaviour is found to follow the trends established by Lighthill (1949) in a linearized theory. Results for the Mach number of the wall shock are also presented. The shock does not degenerate to a sound wave even for large corner angles and low Mach numbers.