Sonic discontinuities in a relaxing gas

Following Elcrat [1] the phenomena associated with the sonic discontinuities in non-equilibrium gasdynamics have been studied here. The sonic wave in non-equilibrium gaseous medium propagates with the frozen speed of sound. The magnitude of discontinuities of the first derivatives of flow quantities in the unsteady flow of relaxing gas are shown to satisfy Riccatti equations along the orthogonal trajectories of surface S(t). In order to integrate them in full generality, they are transformed to an equation along the bicharacteristic curve in the characteristic manifold S(t). These equations have been solved completely. The criteria for decay or blow up of sonic discontinuities are given and the particular cases of plane and spherical waves existing in an ideal dissociative gasdynamics have been discussed. In the case of planewave for uniform propagation, it is shown that the dissociating character of the gas is to decrease the critical time. Other cases of shock formation have been studied in detail.