Shock compression of dry Air

A molecular dynamics based shock compression study is presented for dry air. Dry air is modeled to consist of 78.08% of Nitrogen, 20.95% of Oxygen and 0.97% of Carbon-dioxide. Shock Hugoniot curves are developed for air under various initial temperature and pressure conditions simulating air at various mean-sea-level altitudes. Reactive potentials have been used for the simulations and possibilities of dissociation and ionization of the gaseous molecules along with chemical reactions between the gasses have been investigated. Equation of state parameters are also derived from the MD simulations for use in continuum simulations.