The 9th International Conference on Matter and Radiation at Extremes (ICMRE2026) ( ICMRE2026)

The radial propagation of a shock wave in a cylindrical high-pressure discharge chamber filled with hydrogen has been studied by numerical simulation. The disturbance source (shock wave) is a breakdown in the electrode gap with a current rise rate of ≈ 10¹¹ A/s. A system of gas dynamics equations for a compressible inviscid medium was used for the mathematical description [1], and the numerical solution was obtained using a one-dimensional finite-difference scheme in a cylindrically symmetric formulation. To enable rapid verification of the model, various simplified energy release models were tested [2]. Based on a comparison with a wide range of experimental data [3], it is shown that the model qualitatively reproduces the key processes: the evolution of the shock wave and the pressure on the chamber wall. The qualitative agreement of the calculated and experimental pressure profiles confirms the fundamental applicability of the numerical method. It is found that the accuracy of the simulation is highly sensitive to the initial gas pressure and the disturbance source model; the current quantitative discrepancies are attributed to the need for a more detailed description of the energy source characteristics and other plasma effects.