The transitory phase of the establishment of supercritical shock when a strong shock emerges from a dense medium in a gas

An analytical examination of the transitory phase structures occurring when a strong shock emerges from a dense medium into a gas is presented. It is noted that a stationary phase eventually exists in the gas, with the shock being preceded by a radiative precursor in local thermodynamic equilibrium with the gas. The transition period is the time period before the equilibrium structures have formed, but after the shock has emerged. A constant flux source of uniform velocity is formulated into a model to describe the time dependent properties of the supercritical shock wave. It is assumed that the radiative flux emitted maintains a constant magnitude, and further more that the source is moving at a constant velocity. The time-dependent properties of the emerging wave are found to depend only on the gas temperature exponent in the Rosseland mean free path formulation.