Temperature measurements and an improved equation of state for shocked liquid benzene

Time-resolved, Raman spectroscopy measurements were used to determine temperatures in multiply shocked liquid benzene to peak pressures of ~19 GPa. The previously reported equation of state (EOS) for benzene provides temperatures that are lower than the experimental measurements. To achieve improved temperature calculations, key thermodynamic parameters in the existing EOS were varied to examine and understand the sensitivity of temperatures to those parameters. Using the sensitivity studies, the benzene EOS parameters were refined to provide a good agreement between the calculated temperatures and the measured temperatures in multiply shocked benzene. Use of the improved EOS also leads to an increase in the decomposition temperature from 1315 K to 1485 K, for singly shocked liquid benzene. The present work underscores the importance of temperature measurements for developing accurate EOS for shocked liquids.