Confined shocks inside isolated liquid volumes: A new path of erosion?

The unique confinement of shock waves inside isolated liquid volumes amplifies the density of shock–liquid interactions. We investigate this universal principle through an interdisciplinary study of shock-induced cavitation inside liquid volumes, isolated in 2 and 3 dimensions. By combining high-speed visualizations of ideal water drops realized in microgravity with smoothed particle simulations, we evidence strong shock-induced cavitation at the focus of the confined shocks. We extend this analysis to ground-observations of jets and drops using an analytic model and argue that cavitation caused by trapped shocks offers a distinct mechanism of erosion in high-speed impacts (>rsim100ms-1).