Interaction of cosmic ray nuclei of different charge (z = 4-8; z = 10-14; z = 20-28) with the Ag, Br and C, N, O nuclei was analysed. The energy dependence was obtained for the following multihadron production characteristics; (a) half-angles θ1/2π of meson emission; (b) meson multiplicity per interacting nucleon; (c) shower particle quasi-rapidity distributions; (d) width of the quasi-rapidity distributions of mesons.The heavy-nucleus interactions were compared with nucleon-nucleon and nucleon-nucleus interactions, at intermediate and minimum impact parameters.A theoretical approach based on the assumption of a collective nuclear interaction mechanism and on the recently developed model of multihadron production in elementary interactions was used to interpret the experimental results.

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