Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
Perturbation expansions are sought for the flow variables associated with the diffraction of a plane weak shock wave around convex-angled corners in a polytropic, inviscid, thermally-nonconducting gas. Lighthill's method of strained co-ordinates [4] produces a uniformly valid expansion for most of the diffracted front, while the remainder of this front is treated by a modification of the shock-ray theory of Whitham [6]. The solutions from these approaches are patched just inside the ‘shadow’ region yielding a plausible description of the entire diffracted shock front.