A weak shock wave reflection over wedges

When a weak shock wave reflects from wedges its reflection pattern does not appear to be a simple Mach reflection. This reflection pattern is known to be von Neumann Mach reflection in which a Mach stem can not necessarily be straight. In this paper the local change of the Mach stem curvature was experimentally and numerically investigated. A distinct triple point, at which the curvature becomes infinite as appears in a simple Mach reflection, was not observed but the Mach stem curvature became a maximum between foot of the Mach stem and a point, P₁, at which an incident shock met with a reflected shock. Maximum curvature point P₂ and P₁ do not coincide for small wedge angles and tend to merge over a certain wedge angle. Experimental results agreed with numerical results. The trajectory angle of P₂ was found to be expressed well by Whitham's shock-shock angle.This article was processed using Springer-Verlag T_EX Shock Waves macro package 1.0 and the AMS fonts, developed by the American Mathematical Society.