Viscous damping of perturbed shocks

In order to understand the fluid behavior of materials in high-energy density conditions, we seek methods to determine the viscosity of a sample. One method entails tracking the decay of a perturbation in a shock front. We characterize the viscous damping of an ablatively-generated shock by simulating laser-driven shocks through epoxy with multiphysics code xRAGE and measuring the amplitude decay and oscillation. With simulated velocity interferometry and pyrometry, we constrain experimental parameters to best measure viscosity.