Structure and stability of shock waves in granular gases

Previous experiments have revealed that shock waves driven through dissipative media may become unstable, for example, in granular gases, and in molecular gases undergoing strong relaxation effects. The current paper addresses this problem of shock stability at the Euler and Navier–Stokes continuum levels in a system of disks (two-dimensional) undergoing activated inelastic collisions. The dynamics of shock formation and stability is found to be in very good agreement with earlier molecular dynamic simulations (Sirmas & Radulescu, Phys. Rev. E, vol. 91, 2015, 023003). It was found that the modelling of shock instability requires the introduction of molecular noise for its development and sustenance. This is confirmed in two stability problems. In the first, the evolution of shock formation dynamics is monitored without noise, with only initial noise and with continuous molecular noise. Only the latter reproduces the results of shock instability of molecular dynamics simulations. In the second problem, the steady travelling wave solution is obtained for the shock structure in the inviscid and viscous limits and its nonlinear stability is studied with and without molecular fluctuations, again showing that instability can be sustained only in the presence of fluctuations. The continuum results show that instability takes the form of a rippled front of a wavelength comparable with the relaxation thickness of the steady shock wave, at scales at which molecular fluctuations become important, in excellent agreement with the molecular dynamic simulations.