Expansion of a wedge of non-ideal gas into vacuum

We study the problem of expansion of a wedge of non-ideal gas into vacuum in a two-dimensional bounded domain. The non-ideal gas is characterized by a van der Waals type equation of state. The problem is modeled by standard Euler equations of compressible flow, which are simplified by a transformation to similarity variables and then to hodograph transformation to arrive at a second order quasilinear partial differential equation in phase space; this, using Riemann variants, can be expressed as a non-homogeneous linearly degenerate system provided that the flow is supersonic. For the solution of the governing system, we study the interaction of two-dimensional planar rarefaction waves, which is a two-dimensional Riemann problem with piecewise constant data in the self-similar plane. The real gas effects, which significantly influence the flow regions and boundaries and which do not show up in the ideal gas model, are elucidated; this aspect of the problem has not been considered until now. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.