Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2006
An analysis of the structure of the wakes and waves in steady compressible magnetohydrodynamics is presented. No restriction is made on the equation of state of the gas or on the ratios of the various dissipative parameters. An asymptotic solution is obtained which furnishes directly the flow far from a body and which may be used in the construction of the entire flow field. The non-dissipative solutions are obtained as a non-uniform limit for vanishing dissipation; no matter how small the dissipation, one can go far enough from the origin that the flow is essentially dissipative. For non-aligned fields the wave pattern consists of a downstream wake and either two or four standing waves, depending on the flow regime. For aligned fields, two of these waves become wakes, so that the wake is a superposition of three structured layers, with either all downstream or two downstream and one up-stream. It is found that the non-dissipative limit of the wake is non-unique for the aligned fields case. Different limits are obtained depending on how the various dissipative parameters vanish.