15
SHOCK STABILITY IN GAS DYNAMICS
The general theory (Chapter 12) has shown that the stability of shocks requires
that the number of outgoing characteristics (counting with multiplicity) be equal
to the number of jump conditions minus one: recall indeed that there is one degree
of freedom for the unknown front. With Rankine–Hugoniot jump conditions, a
necessary condition to have this equality is the Lax shock criterion.
In this chapter, we deal with the stability of Lax shocks for the full Euler
equations, as was done by Majda [126] (and independently by Blokhin [18]). For
the stability analysis of undercompressive shocks (submitted to generalized jump
conditions), and in particular of subsonic liquid–vapour phase boundaries, the
reader may refer to the series of papers [10,12,39–41] (also see [215]). Otherwise,
we recommend the very nice review paper by Barmin and Egorushkin [8] (in
which the reader will find, if not afraid of the cyrillic alphabet, numerous
interesting references to the Soviet literature), addressing also the stability of
viscous (Lax) shocks.
15.1 Normal modes analysis
Regarding the stability of shocks in gas dynamics, normal modes analysis
dates back to the 1940s (and the atomic bomb research): stability conditions
were derived in particular by Bethe [16], Erpenbeck [53], and independently
by D
yakov [52], Iordanski˘ı [89], Kontorovich [101], etc. It was completed by
Majda and coworkers, who paid attention to neutral modes. However, they did
not publish the complete analysis for the full Euler equations (Majda referring
in [126] to unpublished computations by Oliger and Sundstr¨om), but only for
the isentropic Euler equations. We provide below this analysis, from a mostly
algebraic point of view, in which the isentropic case shows up as a special, easier
case – corresponding to a section of the algebraic manifold considered. (For a
more analytical point of view, see [92].)
With the full Euler equations in space dimension d, the number of outgoing
characteristics for Lax shocks is d + 1. Furthermore, it is easy to check that
outgoing characteristics correspond to the state behind (according to the termi-
nology introduced in Chapter 13) the shock only: depending on the choice of the
normal vector, pointing to the region where states are indexed by r, outgoing
characteristics would be denoted λ
r
2
and λ
r
3
,orλ
l
1
and λ
l
2
. Or equivalently, the
stable subspace to be considered in the normal modes analysis only involves
modes associated with the state behind the shock. We shall (arbitrarily) use the