4. Basic physics of liquid breakdown

4.1 Physical properties of liquids

All materials are solid at very low temperatures, and gaseous when the temperature is sufficiently high. The understanding of many basic processes in the liquid state is facilitated by considering the liquid as either a compressed gas or a solid, for which theoretical models are well established. Knowledge of the behavior of certain physical quantities when pressure p (e.g. from 0 to 10 MPa) and temperature T (from – 50 ×C to 100 ×C) are strongly varied is necessary to identify the mechanisms involved in predisruptive and disruptive phenomena. This section briefly examines the influence of p and T on the physical properties of liquids.

In practice, a liquid's solidification temperature T _s ...