c © ESO 2009 Astronomy &Astrophysics

Context. It has long been suggested that shocks might play an important role in altering the form of the interstellar medium (ISM). Shocks enhance gas density and sufficiently dense regions may become self gravitating. Potential star-forming clouds within larger molecular clouds, move randomly at supersonic speeds and a collision between them, is highly inelastic. Aims. Depending on the precollision velocity, colliding molecular clouds produce a slab that is either shock-compressed or pressure-confined. In a sequel of two Papers (I and II), we simulate molecular cloud collision and investigate the dynamical evolution of such slabs. Shocked slabs appear susceptible to hydrodynamic instabilities and, in the present Paper (I), we study the effect of strong shear between slab layers on the dynamic evolution of a shock compressed gas slab. Head-on and off-centre cloud collisions have been examined in this work. Self gravity is included in all our simulations. Methods. Simulations presented were performed using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical scheme. Individual, precollision clouds are modelled as pressure-confined Bonnor-Ebert spheres. However, for simplicity the thermodynamic details of the problem are simplified and the gas temperature is evolved simply by a barytropic equation of state. Obviously, the gas suffers to some extent from thermal inertial effects. However, we note that the dynamical timescale is much smaller than the local sound crossing time so that any such effects should have minimum influence. Results. Strong shocks are highly radiative. Thus a highly supersonic cloud collision produces a cold, roughly isothermal shoc