In the 1950s, D'yakov and Kontorovich predicted that under certain conditio
ns perturbed shock waves in nonideal gases can become unstable by emitting
undamped sound and entropy-vortex waves. For the last 45 years, though, lit
tle progress has been made in the identification and numerical modeling of
physical conditions for which this phenomenon might occur. Using a van der
Waals equation of state, we present for the first time a dynamical simulati
on of a D'yakov-Kontorovich instability. The two-dimensional emission patte
rn of acoustic waves appearing in the simulation agrees with the prediction
of a linearized theory.