skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: What do we mean by the word “Shock”?

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1212643· OSTI ID:1212643
 [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

From one vantage point, a shock is a continuous but drastic change in state variables that occurs over very small time and length scales. These scales and associated changes in state variables can be measured experimentally. From another vantage point, a shock is a mathematical singularity consisting of instantaneous changes in state variables. This more mathematical view gives rise to analytical solutions to idealized problems. And from a third vantage point, a shock is a structure in a hydrocode prediction. Its width depends on the simulation’s grid resolution and artificial viscosity. These three vantage points can be in conflict when ideas from the associated fields are combined, and yet combining them is an important goal of an integrated modeling program. This presentation explores an example of how models for real materials in the presence of real shocks react to a hydrocode’s numerical shocks of finite width. The presentation will include an introduction to plasticity for the novice, an historical view of plasticity algorithms, a demonstration of how pursuing the meaning of “shock” has resulted in hydrocode improvements, and will conclude by answering some of the questions that arise from that pursuit. After the technical part of the presentation, a few slides advertising LANL’s Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop will be shown.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1212643
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-15-26656; TRN: US1500416
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English