Domains and boundaries of nonstationary oblique shock-wave reflections in perfect and imperfect monatomic and diatomic gases

The paper deals with an analytical and experimental study aimed at clarifying the problem of reflection of oblique shock waves in unsteady monatomic and diatomic gas flows. The analysis shows that for incident shock Mach numbers in the range from 1 to 10, there exist seven diffraction domains in nitrogen and six domains in argon, all of which are composed of the four well-known regular reflections, single-Mach reflection, complex-Mach reflection, and double-Mach reflection. Real-gas effects are shown to affect significantly both the transition boundaries between the reflections and the domain dimensions. The analytical results are in complete agreement with hypersonic shock tube experiments.