Diaphragmless shock tube for primary dynamic calibration of pressure meters

In conventional shock tubes with a diaphragm many effects related to the burst of the diaphragm can influence the shock formation and thus prevent an ideal pressure step change predicted by the shock tube measurement model being generated. This paper presents a newly developed diaphragmless shock tube, in which a diaphragm is replaced with a quick-acting pneumatic valve. The developed shock tube has a capability to generate pressure steps calculable from its measurement model with a relative expanded uncertainty of less than 0.025, which can be used as the input signal in primary calibrations of pressure meters.

Fundamental Study on Operational Parameters of Diaphragmless Shock Tube

This paper shows influences of initial conditions on a diaphragmless shock tube operation. This facility consists of a driver tube, a driven tube and a damp tank. The driver tube has a circular cross section with diameter of 150 mm and the driven tube, a rectangular cross section (60 mm x 150 mm). The shock tube is operated by using a quick-opening pneumatic piston instead of a diaphragm. For the operation, pressure inside the pneumatic piston (piston pressure) is quickly released by opening a solenoid valve. In this paper, the initial piston pressure was chosen as a parameter to investigate effects on test flow conditions created by the shock tube. As a result, it was found that when the piston pressure at initial condition is large, piston pressure decreased more rapidly than that obtained for a small piston pressure condition, regardless of the pressure ratio of driver and the driven tube. In the condition of a constant initial operational pressure ratio and a different piston pressure, the shock Mach number was almost constant.

Experimental investigation of cylindrical converging shock waves interacting with a polygonal heavy gas cylinder

The interaction of cylindrical converging shock waves with a polygonal heavy gas cylinder is studied experimentally in a vertical annular diaphragmless shock tube. The reliability of the shock tube facility is verified in advance by capturing the cylindrical shock movements during the convergence and reflection processes using high-speed schlieren photography. Three types of air/SF6 polygonal interfaces with cross-sections of an octagon, a square and an equilateral triangle are formed by the soap film technique. A high-speed laser sheet imaging method is employed to monitor the evolution of the three polygonal interfaces subjected to the converging shock waves. In the experiments, the Mach number of the incident cylindrical shock at its first contact with each interface is maintained to be 1.35 for all three cases. The results show that the evolution of the polygonal interfaces is heavily dependent on the initial conditions, such as the interface shapes and the shock features. A theoretical model for circulation initially deposited along the air/SF6 polygonal interface is developed based on the theory of Samtaney & Zabusky (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 269, 1994, pp. 45–78). The circulation depositions along the initial interface result in the differences in flow features among the three polygonal interfaces, including the interface velocities and the perturbation growth rates. In comparison with planar shock cases, there are distinct phenomena caused by the convergence effects, including the variation of shock strength during imploding and exploding (geometric convergence), consecutive reshocks on the interface (compressibility), and special behaviours of the movement of the interface structures (phase inversion).