| Astrophysics (Index) | About |
A blastwave (or blast wave) can be thought of as a shock wave expanding from a small volume. (It expands faster than sound, and if allowed to, expands spherically.) A mathematical model of a blastwave developed by several physicists, including Leonid Sedov and Geoffrey Taylor, describes what is termed Sedov-Taylor expansion (or Sedov expansion). It models the blastwave expansion as an adiabatic process, a useful approximation during a middle phase of the expansion, specifically during the time-interval in which the amount of energy within the volume behind the shock front is not significantly changing. This model is useful for powerful explosions (including nuclear explosions) and, within astrophysics, for modeling supernovae and supernova remnants. Sedov length is an astrophysical term for the distance from the initial blast at which the phase of Sedov expansion begins. Often, the term Sedov length refers to a the results of a particular formula that approximates this distance well enough to express its scale.