The reflexion and diffraction of shock waves

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Abstract
When I was first asked to give a general lecture to the 5th British Theoretical Mechanics Colloquium (held at Liverpool University, 2–5 April 1963), I put up the title ‘Shock Waves’, thinking that I might run over a wide field of present-day research, pointing out some of the unanswered problems. In the intervening months, however, I came across the new book by Dr Bradley (1962) of Liverpool University,The Physics and Chemistry of Shock Waves, and as recently as last November there appeared a summarizing article by Pain bt Rogers (1962) of London University inReports on Progress in Physics. The first of these deals in great detail with the modern physical and chemical aspects of the subject—with real gas effects and experimental techniques-and the second summarizes the general classical properties and gives an extended account of recent work, for example, on real gas effects and on magnetohydrodynamics. I also bore in mind that magnetogasdynamics received a majestic treatment at the 4th Colloquium from Dr Shercliff. In the end, then, I decided to confine my remarks to one particular problem, namely the reflexion and diffraction of shock waves, and to concentrate mainly on developments during the past ten years. This paper is the text of the lecture.