New liquid shock sensor and measurement of shock Hugoniot compression curve for several biorelated materials

A new optical procedure was proposed to detect the shock wave front sensitively, which makes it possible to measure shock Hugoniot in higher precision than the previous method. The present method is based on the very large pressure dependence of the refractive index of liquids upon compression. This new shock sensor is suitable for the precise measurement of shock Hugoniot states for liquids and bio-related soft materials. Experiments were performed on water, NaCl aqueous solution and gelatine gel in the pressure range of less than 1 GPa. It is found that the method is very effective for the sensitive detection of shock front in these materials. By comparing the data for these materials, precision of the method was discussed.