Son of a Gambling Man Ronald F. Probstein, Ford Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has had a long career in engineering research and has made significant contributions in many areas from ballistic missile design, to hypersonic flight theory, to the field of synthetic fuels, a subject of obvious importance to everyone. His 1959 book, Hypersonic Flow Theory, co-authored with Wallace D. Hayes, and reprinted by Dover in 2004 as Hypersonic Inviscid Flow, is still the basic book on this subject. Synthetic Fuels, written with R. Edwin Hicks, is certainly one of the most important and timely engineering texts ever reprinted by Dover.
In addition to their own writings, Probstein and Hayes edited the English translation of a major text by two distinguished Russian physicists, Ya. B. Zel'dovich and Yu. P. Raizer, Physics of Shock Waves and High-Temperature Hydrodynamic Phenomena.
However, Dr. Probstein's literary legacy isn't all about hard science. In 2009 he published an evocatively entertaining memoir of his father and their life in Depression-era New York, Honest Sid: Memoir of a Gambling Man. Even though not a Dover book, it is certainly highly recommended.
Critical Acclaim for Physics of Shock Waves and High-Temperature Hydrodynamic Phenomena: "The republication by Dover Publications of this masterwork by Ya. B. Zel'dovich and Yu. P. Raizer will be welcomed by all workers dealing with high-temperature (radiating) flows. This book is a virtual 'bible' for studies of shocks and radiation fronts in high speed aeronautics, astronautics (re-entry), astrophysics, fireballs, shock tubes, and very intense explosions.
Zel'dovich was a physicist of extraordinary breadth of interests. The style of this book is to give heuristic explanations followed by rigorous analysis. It is insightful for both beginning students and researchers in the field. This book is an ABSOLUTE MUST for anyone working on the subjects listed above."
"I URGE anyone working in astrophysics and high-temperature flow physics to buy, read, enjoy, and be enlightened by this masterpiece." ? Dimitri Mihalas, co-author of Foundations of Radiation Hydrodynamics
Klappentext
High temperatures elicit a variety of reactions in gases, including increased molecular vibrations, dissociation, chemical reactions, ionization, and radiation of light. In addition to affecting the motion of the gas, these processes can lead to changes of composition and electrical properties, as well as optical phenomena.
These and other processes of extreme conditions ? such as occur in explosions, in supersonic flight, in very strong electrical discharges, and in other cases ? are the focus of this outstanding text by two leading physicists of the former Soviet Union. The authors deal thoroughly with all the essential physical influences on the dynamics and thermodynamics of continuous media, weaving together material from such disciplines as gas dynamics, shock-wave theory, thermodynamics and statistical physics, molecular physics, spectroscopy, radiation theory, astrophysics, solid-state physics, and other fields.
This volume, uniquely comprehensive in the field of high-temperature gas physics and gas dynamics, was edited and annotated by Wallace D. Hayes and Ronald F. Probstein, leading authorities on the flow of gases at very high speeds. It is exceptionally well suited to the needs of graduate students in physics, as well as professors, engineers, and researchers.
Inhalt
Preface to the Dover Edition
Editors' Foreword
Preface to the English Edition
Preface to the First Russian Edition
Preface to the Second Russian Edition
I. Elements of gasdynamics and the classical theory of shock waves
1. Continuous flow of an inviscid nonconducting gas
1. The equations of gasdynamics
2. Lagrangian coordinates
3. Sound waves
4. Spherical sound waves
5. Characteristics
6. Plane isentropic flow. Riemann Invariants
7. Plane isentropic gas flow in a bounded region
8. Simple waves
9. Distortion of the wave form in a traveling wave of finite amplitude. Some properties of simple waves
10. The rarefaction wave
11. The centered rarefaction wave as an example of self-similar gas motion
12. On the impossibility of the existence of a centered compression wave
2. Shock waves
13. Introduction to the gasdynamics of shock waves
14. Hugoniot curves
15. Shock waves in a perfect gas with constant specific heats
16. Geometric interpretation of the laws governing compression shocks
17. Impossibility of rarefaction shock waves in a fluid with normal thermodynamic properties
18. Weak shock waves
19. Shock waves in a fluid with anomalous thermodynamic properties
3. Viscosity and heat conduction in gasdynamics
20. Equations of one-dimensional gas flow
21. Remarks on the second viscosity coefficient
22. Remarks on the absorption of sound
23. The structure and thickness of a weak shock front
4. Various problems
24. Propagation of an arbitrary discontinuity
25. Strong explosion in a homogeneous atmosphere
26. Approximate treatment of a strong explosion
27. Remarks on the point explosion with counterpressure
28. Sudden isentropic expansion of a spherical gas cloud into vacuum
29. Conditions for the self-similar sudden expansion of a gas cloud into vacuum
II. Thermal radiation and radiant heat exchange in a medium
1. Introduction and basic concepts
2. Mechanisms of emission, absorption, and scattering of light in gases
3. Equilibrium radiation and the concept of a perfect black body
4. Induced emission
4a. Induced emission of radiation in the classical and quantum theories and the laser effect
5. The radiative transfer equation
6. Integral expressions for the radiation intensity
7. Radiation fromm a plane layer
8. The brightness temperature of the surface of a nonuniformly heated body
9. Motion of a fluid taking into account radiant heat exchange
10. The diffusion approximation
11. The "forward-reverse" approximation
12. Local equilibrium and the approximation of radiation heat conduction
13. Relationship between the diffusion approximation and the radiation heat conduction approximation
14. Radiative equilibrium in stellar photospheres
15. Solution to the plane photosphere problem
16. Radiation energy losses of a heated body
17. Hydrodynamic equations accounting for radiation energy and pressure and radiant heat exchange
18. The number of photons as an invariant of the classical electromagnetic field
III. Thermodynamic properties of gases at high temperatures
1. Gas of noninteracting particles
1. Perfect gas with constant specific heats and invariant number of particles
2. Calculation of thermodynamic functions using partition functions
3. Dissociation of diatomic molecules
4. Chemical reactions
5. Ionization and electronic excitation
6. The electronic partition function and the role of the excitation energy of atoms
7. Approximate methods of calculation in the region of multiple ionization
8. Interpolation formulas and the effective adiabatic exponent
9. The Hugoniot curve with dissociation and ionization
10. The Hugoniot relations with equilibrium radiation
2. Gases with Coulomb interactions
11. Rarefied ionized gases
12. Dense gases. Elements of Fermi-Dirac statistics for an electron gas
13. The Thomas-Fermi model of an atom and highly compressed cold materials
14. Calculation of thermodynamic functions of a hot dense gas by the Thomas-Fermi method
IV. Shock tubes
1. The use of shock tubes for studying kinetics in chemical physics
2. Principl…