Transition study for asymmetric reflection between moving incident shock waves

The transition criteria seen from the ground frame are studied in this paper for asymmetrical reflection between shock waves moving at constant linear speed. To limit the size of the parameter space, these criteria are considered in detail for the reduced problem where the upper incident shock wave is moving and the lower one is steady, and a method is provided for extension to the general problem where both the upper and lower ones are unsteady. For the reduced problem, we observe that, in the shock angle plane, shock motion lowers or elevates the von Neumann condition in a global way depending on the direction of shock motion, and this change becomes less important for large shock angle. The effect of shock motion on the detachment condition, though small, displays non-monotonicity. The shock motion changes the transition criteria through altering the effective Mach number and shock angle, and these effects add for small shock angle and mutually cancel for large shock angle, so that shock motion has a less important effect for large shock angle. The role of the effective shock angle is not monotonic on the detachment condition, explaining the observed non-monotonicity for the role of shock motion on the detachment condition. Furthermore, it is found that the detachment condition has a wavefunction form that can be approximated as a hybrid of a sinusoidal function and a linear function of the shock angle.

Evolution of artificial disturbances in a shear layer at M=1.43

The evolution of artificial disturbances in a laminar boundary layer on a flat plate model in the presence of an incident shock wave is considered. The flow is supersonic with the freestream Mach number M = 1.43. The study is carried out by hot-wire anemometry. A dielectric barrier discharge is used to generate disturbances. Data on the distribution in space of the average and non-stationary components of the mass flow are obtained. Disturbances created by the discharge and their evolution along the separation zone are recorded.

Blast mitigation by perforated plates using an explosive driven shock tube: study of geometry effects and plate numbers

This work is set in the context of blast mitigation based on geometric means, namely perforated metallic plates or grids. When a shock wave passes through a perforated plate, the flow field is modified, and new shock waves are created, as well as regions of vortices and turbulence in which the energy of the wave can be dissipated. In this study, an explosive driven shock tube (EDST) was used to visualize the interaction of a blast wave with perforated plates or with a piece of cast metallic foam. Additionally, the overpressure and the impulse of the reflected blast wave on a wall located downstream were assessed. The use of an EDST allowed the evaluation of the mitigation capacity under a high dynamic loading. Several combinations of perforated plates were tested, varying the geometry and the number of plates, as well as switching between two different spacings. When the shock wave collided with a plate, we observed that part of the incident shock wave was reflected by the plate, while the remaining wave was transmitted through it. Downstream of the plate, both the overpressure and the impulse were reduced, this effect being more prominent as the porosity of the plates decreased. When two plates were placed as obstacles, this phenomenon of reflection/transmission was repeated twice consecutively, further reducing the downstream reflected overpressure and impulse. An array of three plates or a piece of metallic foam were even more effective in mitigating the blast wave. Varying the distance between two or three plates had no effect on blast mitigation.

Adjoint-based optimisation of detonation initiation by a focusing shock wave

An optimisation study of a shock-wave-focusing geometry is presented in this work. The configuration serves as a reliable and deterministic detonation initiator in a pulsed detonation engine. The combustion chamber consists of a circular pipe with one convergent–divergent axisymmetric nozzle, acting as a focusing device for an incoming shock wave. Geometrical changes are proposed to reduce the minimum shock wave strength necessary for a successful detonation initiation. For that purpose, the adjoint approach is applied. The sensitivity of the initiation to flow variations delivered by this method is used to reshape the obstacle’s form. The thermodynamics is described by a higher-order temperature-dependent polynomial, avoiding the large errors of the constant adiabatic exponent assumption. The chemical reaction of stoichiometric premixed hydrogen-air is modelled by means of a one-step kinetics with a variable pre-exponential factor. This factor is adapted to reproduce the induction time of a complex kinetics model. The optimisation results in a 5% decrease of the incident shock wave threshold for the successful detonation initiation.

Visualization of separation and reattachment in an incident shock-induced interaction

An experimental study is conducted on the qualitative visualization of the flow field in separation and reattachment flows induced by an incident shock interaction by several techniques including shear-sensitive liquid crystal coating (SSLCC), oil flow, schlieren, and numerical simulation. The incident shock wave is generated by a wedge in a Mach 2.7 duct flow, where the strength of the interaction is varied from weak to moderate by changing the angle of attack α of the wedge from 8° and 10° to 12°. The stagnation pressure upstream was set to approximately 607.9 kPa. The SSLCC technique was used to visualize the surface flow characteristics and analyze the surface shear stress fields induced by the initial incident shock wave over the bottom wall and sidewall experimentally which resolution is 3500 × 200 pixels, and the numerical simulation was also performed as the supplement for a clearer understanding to the flow field. As a result, surface shear stress over the bottom wall was visualized qualitatively by SSLCC images, and flow features such as separation/reattachment and the variations of position/size of separation bubble with wedge angle were successfully distinguished. Furthermore, analysis of shear stress trend over the bottom wall by a hue value curve indicated that the relative magnitude of shear stress increased significantly downstream of the separation bubble compared with that upstream. The variation trend of shear stress was consistent with the numerical simulation results, and the error of separation position was less than 2 mm. Finally, the three-dimensional schematic of incident shock-induced interaction has been achieved by qualitative summary by multiple techniques, including SSLCC, oil flow, schlieren, and numerical simulation.

The shape of incident shock wave in steady axisymmetric conical Mach reflection

For internal flow with supersonic inflow boundary conditions, a complicated oblique shock reflection may occur. Different from the planar shock reflection problem, where the shape of the incident shock can be a straight line, the shape of the incident shock wave in the inward-facing axisymmetric shock reflection in steady flow is an unknown curve. In this paper, a simple theoretical approach is proposed to determine the shape of this incident shock wave. The present theory is based on the steady Euler equations. When the assumption that the streamlines are straight lines at locations just behind the incident shock is adopted, an ordinary differential equation can be derived, and the shape of the incident shock wave is given by the solution of this ordinary differential equation. The predicted curves of the incident shock wave at several inlet conditions agree very well with the results of the numerical simulations.