RESUMEN

Strong cylindrical and spherical shock waves, collapsing at the center (or axis) of symmetry, are studied for a Van der Waals gas. The perturbation technique applied in this paper provides a global solution to the implosion problem, yielding the results for Guderley's local self-similar solution, which is valid only in the vicinity of the center/axis of implosion. The similarity exponents are found along with the corresponding amplitudes in the vicinity of the shock-collapse. The flow parameters and the shock trajectory have been computed for different values of the adiabatic coefficient and the Van der Waals excluded volume.