Morphology of Shocked Lateral Outflows in Colliding Hydrodynamic Flows

TL;DR

This study uses 3D hydrodynamic simulations to analyze the morphology of shocks and lateral outflows in colliding supersonic flows, revealing how flow parameters influence shock structure and dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation approach to study the shape and behavior of shocks in colliding flows with varying parameters, advancing understanding of such phenomena.

Findings

Interaction region motion is driven by ram pressure imbalances.

Conical bow shock shape results from deflected shocked lateral outflows.

Flow parameter variations affect shock morphology and dynamics.

Abstract

Supersonic interacting flows occurring in phenomena such as protostellar jets give rise to strong shocks, and have been demonstrated in several laboratory experiments. To study such colliding flows, we use the AstroBEAR AMR code to conduct hydrodynamic simulations in three dimensions. We introduce variations in the flow parameters of density, velocity, and cross sectional radius of the colliding flows %radius in order to study the propagation and conical shape of the bow shock formed by collisions between two, not necessarily symmetric, hypersonic flows. We find that the motion of the interaction region is driven by imbalances in ram pressure between the two flows, while the conical structure of the bow shock is a result of shocked lateral outflows (SLOs) being deflected from the horizontal when the flows are of differing cross-section.