DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Department of Mechanical, Production & Industrial and Automotive

Engineering

GAS DYNAMICS
AND JET
PROPULSION LAB

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 EXPERIMENT - 4
AIM: To Study the Propagation of Shockwaves through a Shocktube
APPARATUS: Shocktube
THEORY:
1. Shockwaves.
In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating
disturbance. When a wave moves faster than the local speed of sound in a fluid, it is a shock
wave. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a
medium; however, it is characterized by an abrupt, nearly discontinuous change in pressure,
temperature and density of the medium.

For context of comparison, in supersonic flows, additional increased expansion may be

achieved through an expansion fan, also known as a Prandtl-Meyer expansion fan. The
accompanying expansion wave may approach and eventually collide and recombine with the
shock wave, creating a process of destructive interference. The sonic boom associated with the
passage of a supersonic aircraft is a type of sound wave produced by constructive interference.

Unlike solitons (another kind of nonlinear wave), the energy and speed of a shock wave
alone dissipates relatively quickly with distance. When a shock wave passes through matter,
energy is preserved but entropy increases. This change in the matter's properties manifests itself
as a decrease in the energy which can be extracted as work, and as a drag force on supersonic
objects; shock waves are strongly irreversible processes.

In elementary fluid mechanics utilizing ideal gases, a shock wave is treated as a

discontinuity where entropy increases over a nearly infinitesimal region. Since no fluid flow is
discontinuous, a control volume is established around the shock wave, with the control surfaces
that bound this volume parallel to the shock wave (with one surface on the pre-shock side of
the fluid medium and one on the post-shock side). The two surfaces are separated by a very
small depth such that the shock itself is entirely contained between them. At such control
surfaces, momentum, mass flux and energy are constant; within combustion, detonations can
be modelled as heat introduction across a shock wave. It is assumed the system is adiabatic (no
heat exits or enters the system) and no work is being done. The Rankine–Hugoniot conditions
arise from these considerations.

Taking into account the established assumptions, in a system where the downstream
properties are becoming subsonic: the upstream and downstream flow properties of the fluid
are considered isentropic. Since the total amount of energy within the system is constant, the
stagnation enthalpy remains constant over both regions. Though, entropy is increasing; this
must be accounted for by a drop-in stagnation pressure of the downstream fluid.

The abruptness of change in the features of the medium, that characterize shock waves,
can be viewed as a phase transition: the pressure-time diagram of a supersonic object

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propagating shows how the transition induced by a shock wave is analogous to a dynamic phase
transition.

When an object (or disturbance) moves faster than the information can propagate into
the surrounding fluid, then the fluid near the disturbance cannot react or "get out of the way"
before the disturbance arrives. In a shock wave the properties of the fluid (density, pressure,
temperature, flow velocity, Mach number) change almost instantaneously. Measurements of
the thickness of shock waves in air have resulted in values around 200 nm (about 10−5 in),
which is on the same order of magnitude as the mean free gas molecule path. In reference to
the continuum, this implies the shock wave can be treated as either a line or a plane if the flow
field is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, respectively.

Shock waves are formed when a pressure front moves at supersonic speeds and pushes
on the surrounding air. At the region where this occurs, sound waves travelling against the flow
reach a point where they cannot travel any further upstream and the pressure progressively
builds in that region; a high-pressure shock wave rapidly forms.

Shock waves are not conventional sound waves; a shock wave takes the form of a very
sharp change in the gas properties. Shock waves in air are heard as a loud "crack" or "snap"
noise. Over longer distances, a shock wave can change from a nonlinear wave into a linear
wave, degenerating into a conventional sound wave as it heats the air and loses energy. The
sound wave is heard as the familiar "thud" or "thump" of a sonic boom, commonly created by
the supersonic flight of aircraft.

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 Figure 1: Mach Cone

Figure 2: Mach Cone of an Aircraft

2. Blast Waves
In fluid dynamics, a blast wave is the increased pressure and flow resulting from the
deposition of a large amount of energy in a small, very localised volume. The flow field can be
approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a self-similar subsonic flow field. In simpler
terms, a blast wave is an area of pressure expanding supersonically outward from an explosive
core. It has a leading shock front of compressed gases. The blast wave is followed by a blast
wind of negative pressure, which sucks items back in towards the center. The blast wave is
harmful especially when one is very close to the center or at a location of constructive
interference. High explosives that detonate generate blast waves.

High-order explosives (HE) are more powerful than low-order explosives (LE). HE
detonates to produce a defining supersonic over-pressurization shock wave. Several sources of
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HE includes trinitrotoluene, C-4, Semtex, nitro-glycerine, and ammonium nitrate fuel oil
(ANFO). LE deflagrate to create a subsonic explosion and lack HE’s over-pressurization wave.
Sources of LE include pipe bombs, gunpowder, and most pure petroleum-based incendiary
bombs such as Molotov cocktails or aircraft improvised as guided missiles. HE and LE induce
different injury patterns. Only HE produces true blast waves.

The simplest form of a blast wave has been described and termed the Friedlander
waveform. It occurs when a high explosive detonates in a free field, that is, with no surfaces
nearby with which it can interact. Blast waves have properties predicted by the physics of
waves. For example, they can diffract through a narrow opening, and refract as they pass
through materials. Like light or sound waves, when a blast wave reaches a boundary between
two materials, part of it is transmitted, part of it is absorbed, and part of it is reflected. The
impedances of the two materials determine how much of each occurs.

The equation for a Friedlander waveform describes the pressure of the blast wave as a
function of time:

Figure 3: A Friedlander waveform is the simplest form of a blast wave

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 Figure 4: A blast wave reflecting from a surface and forming a Mach stem

where Ps is the peak pressure and t* is the time at which the pressure first crosses the
horizontal axis (before the negative phase). Blast waves will wrap around objects and
buildings. Therefore, persons or objects behind a large building are not necessarily protected
from a blast that starts on the opposite side of the building. Scientists use sophisticated
mathematical models to predict how objects will respond to a blast in order to design
effective barriers and safer buildings.

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3. Shocktube
The shock tube is an instrument used to replicate and direct blast waves at a sensor or a
model in order to simulate actual explosions and their effects, usually on a smaller scale. Shock
tubes (and related impulse facilities such as shock tunnels, expansion tubes, and expansion
tunnels) can also be used to study aerodynamic flow under a wide range of temperatures and
pressures that are difficult to obtain in other types of testing facilities. Shock tubes are also
used to investigate compressible flow phenomena and gas phase combustion reactions. More
recently, shock tubes have been used in biomedical research to study how biological specimens
are affected by blast waves.
A shock wave inside a shock tube may be generated by a small explosion (blast-driven) or
by the build-up of high pressures which cause diaphragm(s) to burst and a shock wave to
propagate down the shock tube (compressed-gas driven).

Figure 3: Shocktube

a. History
An early study of compression driven shock tubes was published in 1899 by French
scientist Paul Vielle, though the apparatus was not called a shock tube until the 1940s. In the
[3]

1940s, interest revived and shock tubes were increasingly used to study the flow of fast moving
gases over objects, the chemistry and physical dynamics of gas phase combustion reactions. In
1966, Duff and Blackwell described a type of shock tube driven by high explosives. These
ranged in diameter from 0.6 to 2 m and in length from 3 m to 15 m. The tubes themselves were
constructed of low-cost materials and produced shock waves with peak dynamic pressures of
7 MPa to 200 MPa and durations of a few hundred microseconds to several milliseconds.
Both compression-driven and blast-driven shock tubes are currently used for scientific as
well as military applications. Compressed-gas driven shock tubes are more easily obtained and
maintained in laboratory conditions; however, the shape of the pressure wave is different from
a blast wave in some important respects and may not be suitable for some applications. Blast-

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driven shock tubes generate pressure waves that are more realistic to free-field blast waves.
However, they require facilities and expert personnel for handling high explosives. Also, in
addition to the initial pressure wave, a jet effect caused by the expansion of compressed gases
(compression-driven) or production of rapidly expanding gases (blast-driven) follows and may
transfer momentum to a sample after the blast wave has passed. More recently, laboratory scale
shock tubes driven by fuel-air mixtures have been developed that produce realistic blast waves
and can be operated in more ordinary laboratory facilities. Because the molar volume of gas is
much less, the jet effect is a fraction of that for compressed-gas driven shock tubes. To date,
the smaller size and lower peak pressures generated by these shock tubes make them most
useful for preliminary, non-destructive testing of materials, validation of measurement
equipment such as high-speed pressure transducers, and for biomedical research as well as
military applications.
b. Operations
A simple shock tube is a tube, rectangular or circular in cross-section, usually
constructed of metal, in which a gas at low pressure and a gas at high pressure are separated
using some form of diaphragm. See, for instance, texts by Soloukhin, Gaydon and Hurle, and
Bradley. The diaphragm suddenly bursts open under predetermined conditions to produce a
wave propagating through the low-pressure section. The shock that eventually forms increases
the temperature and pressure of the test gas and induces a flow in the direction of the shock
wave. Observations can be made in the flow behind the incident front or take advantage of the
longer testing times and vastly enhanced pressures and temperatures behind the reflected wave.

Figure 4: Travel of gases in Shocktube

The low-pressure gas, referred to as the driven gas, is subjected to the shock wave. The
high-pressure gas is known as the driver gas. The corresponding sections of the tube are
likewise called the driver and driven sections. The driver gas is usually chosen to have a low
molecular weight, (e.g., helium or hydrogen) for safety reasons, with high speed of sound, but
may be slightly diluted to 'tailor' interface conditions across the shock. To obtain the strongest
shocks the pressure of the driven gas is well below atmospheric pressure (a partial vacuum is
induced in the driven section before detonation).

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 Figure 5: Bursted Diaphragm

The test begins with the bursting of the diaphragm. Several methods are commonly used to
burst the diaphragm.
• A mechanically-driven plunger is sometimes used to pierce it or an explosive charge
may be used to burst it.
• Another method is to use diaphragms of plastic or metals to define specific bursting
pressures. Plastics are used for the lowest burst pressures, aluminium and copper
for somewhat higher levels and mild steel and stainless steel for the highest burst
pressures. These diaphragms are frequently scored in a cross-shaped pattern to a
calibrated depth to ensure that they rupture evenly, contouring the petals so that the
full section of the tube remains open during the test time.
• Yet another method of rupturing the diaphragm utilizes a mixture of combustible
gases, with an initiator designed to produce a detonation within it, producing a
sudden and sharp increase in what may or may not be a pressurized driver. This
blast wave increases the temperature and pressure of the driven gas and induces a
flow in the direction of the shock wave but at lower velocity than the lead wave.
The bursting diaphragm produces a series of pressure waves, each increasing the speed
of sound behind them, so that they compress into a shock propagating through the driven gas.
This shock wave increases the temperature and pressure of the driven gas and induces a flow
in the direction of the shock wave but at lower velocity than the lead wave. Simultaneously, a
rarefaction wave, often referred to as the Prandtl-Meyer wave, travels back in to the driver gas.
The interface, across which a limited degree of mixing occurs, separates driven and
driver gases is referred to as the contact surface and follows, at a lower velocity, the lead wave.

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 A 'Chemical Shock Tube' involves separating driver and driven gases by a pair of
diaphragms designed to fail after pre-determined delays with an end 'dump tank' of greatly
increased cross-section. This allows an extreme rapid reduction (quench) in temperature of the
heated gases.

Figure 8: Shockwave in a Shock tube

Figure 9: Diaphragm of a Shock tube

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c. Applications
In addition to measurements of rates of chemical kinetics shock tubes have been used to
measure dissociation energies and molecular relaxation rates they have been used in
aerodynamic tests. The fluid flow in the driven gas can be used much as a wind tunnel, allowing
higher temperatures and pressures therein replicating conditions in the turbine sections of jet
engines. However, test times are limited to a few milliseconds, either by the arrival of the
contact surface or the reflected shock wave.

They have been further developed into shock tunnels, with an added nozzle and dump tank.
The resultant high temperature hypersonic flow can be used to simulate atmospheric re-entry
of spacecraft or hypersonic craft, again with limited testing times.
Shock tubes have been developed in a wide range of sizes. The size and method of
producing the shock wave determine the peak and duration of the pressure wave it produces.
Thus, shock tubes can be used as a tool used to both create and direct blast waves at a sensor
or an object in order to imitate actual explosions and the damage that they cause on a smaller
scale, provided that such explosions do not involve elevated temperatures and shrapnel or
flying debris. Results from shock tube experiments can be used to develop and validate
numerical model of the response of a material or object to an ambient blast wave without
shrapnel or flying debris. Shock tubes can be used to experimentally determine which materials
and designs would be best suited to the job of attenuating ambient blast waves without shrapnel
or flying debris. The results can then be incorporated into designs to protect structures and
people that might be exposed to an ambient blast wave without shrapnel or flying debris. Shock
tubes are also used in biomedical research to find out how biological tissues are affected by
blast waves.
There are alternatives to the classical shock tube; for laboratory experiments at very high
pressure, shock waves can also be created using high-intensity short-pulse lasers.
A high-temperature supersonic gas flow is initiated in a shock tube as a result of rupture of
a diaphragm separating two gases in high-pressure and low-pressure chambers. An unsteady
rarefaction wave passes into the "driver" gas in the high-pressure chamber with a velocity a
few kilometres per second. This results in the driver’s gas flowing into the low-pressure gas,
pushing the gas in the low-pressure chamber ahead of it. The shock wave propagates in the
low-pressure chamber ahead of this flow of the studied gas. The velocity of the driven gas flow
is equal to that of the driver gas flow. The wave (x − t) pattern, the schematic of the shock tube,
and distribution of pressures p and temperatures T along the tube axis are presented in Figure
3. The parameters are denoted by 0 in the low-pressure chamber of the shock tube, 1 behind
the incident shock wave, 2 behind the contact surface, 3 in the rarefaction wave, 4 in the high-
pressure chamber, and 5 behind the reflected wave. In order to generate a shock wave with the
specified pressure ratio p1/p0 in a shock tube, it is necessary to provide the pressure ratio p4/p0
over the shock tube diaphragm, which satisfies the relation

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 𝛾𝛾4
𝑃𝑃4 𝑃𝑃1 𝑎𝑎0 𝛾𝛾4 − 1 𝑢𝑢1 −2𝛾𝛾4 −1
= �1 − �
𝑃𝑃0 𝑃𝑃0 𝑎𝑎4 2 𝑎𝑎0

where a is the velocity of sound, γ the adiabatic exponent, u1 the velocity of gas flow behind
the shock wave producing the pressure ratio p1/p0. Varying the length of high- and low-
pressure chambers, we can find a regime of shock tube operation under which the shock wave
reflected from an end meets the tail of the rarefaction wave and the head of the reflected
rarefaction wave at a fixed point. This regime known as the "joined" contact surface regime
ensures the maximum time of undisturbed state behind the reflected wave. The maximum flow
parameters achieved in shock tubes depend on the design of the high-pressure chamber.

According to this, shock tubes can be divided into four groups.

(1) Shock tubes with an inert gas in the high-pressure chamber - In this case a driver gas
is hydrogen or helium at a pressure ranging from several to a hundred atmospheres and of
ambient initial temperature. For pressures in the low-pressure chamber from 1 to 100 mmHg,
the shock wave velocities range from 0.5 to 6 km/s. The temperature behind the shock wave is
from 1000 to 10,000 K. The length of the high-pressure gas zone, depending on the tube length

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and the shock wave velocity, is from several centimetres in laboratory tubes, whose length does
not exceed 10 meters, to a meter in test shock tubes 50 to 100 meters long.
(2) Shock tubes with an explosive in the high-pressure chamber - In this case, in the high-
pressure chamber, a hydrogen-oxygen-helium mixture or a solid explosive charge are used to
increase the initial temperature of a driver gas. The gas temperature behind the shock wave
amounts to 20,000 K in an inert gas and 15,000 K in a dissociating gas.

Figure 10: Shocktube with explosive driven chamber

(3) Electrically driven shock tubes - These are tubes in which a discharge chamber with
discharge-heated gas is used instead of the high-pressure chamber. Electrically driven shock
tubes are designed with and without diaphragms because the parameters of the driver gas
increase sharply as a result of discharge. In these shock tubes the velocity of the shock waves
varies from 10 km/sec at initial pressures of several millimetres Hg to 100 km/sec at initial
pressures fractions of a millimetre Hg. Gas temperature reaches a few tens of thousands of
/852degrees.
(4) Shock tubes with shock wave enhancement - Shock tubes in this category use for shock
wave enhancement the interaction of waves arising in transition of a shock wave to sections
with different pressure and cross section, the category also includes shock tubes with two
diaphragms.
In steady propagation of a shock wave in a shock tube the flow parameters behind the
shock wave such as temperature, pressure, density, and velocity are unambiguously determined
by the conservation laws using the shock wave velocity and the gas state, if the degree of
approach to equilibrium is unknown, then determination of flow parameters requires, in
addition to determination of the shock wave velocity, the measurement of one or several more
gas parameters behind the shock wave or the time distribution of these parameters.
These parameters include: density distribution behind the shock wave (interferometer
method, photoelectric shadow method, absorption of an electron beam, absorption of x-rays),
distribution of flow velocity (by the velocity of displacement of a weak disturbance introduced
by transient heating of a wire placed in the flow or by electrical discharge), distribution of the
gas temperature (by spectral methods) or the electron temperature (by optical methods or by
radiation emission), distribution of the flow Mach numbers (by measuring the direction of the

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Mach lines resulting from interaction of the supersonic flow behind the shock wave with an
obstacle in the tube), distribution of pressures (by the readings of piezoelectric transducers),
composition of the gas dissociating behind the shock wave (by absorption of ultraviolet or
infrared radiation), electrophysical properties of gas such as concentration of unbound
electrons and collision frequency (by microwave, optical, electromagnetic, and probe
methods), the shock wave velocity measured by either visualization of its propagation in a
transparent section of the tube or by the time-of-flight method, i.e., measuring the time interval
between the readings of two transducers responding to the shock wave at two points of the tube
(use is made of pressure transducers, photoelectric glow sensors, ionization sensors, and thin-
film resistance thermometers), heat fluxes to the shock tube wall determined by calorimetric
transducers or by measuring the time dependence of the wall temperature using a thin-film
resistance thermometer.
A fraction of the gas mass flowing in the shock tube passes from the centre to the
boundary layer. The thickness of the boundary layer near the shock wave front is zero, then it
grows toward the contact surface, and the gas outflow to the boundary layer grows,
respectively. Growth of the boundary layer is interrupted as soon as the gas outflow across it
becomes equal to the gas inflow across the shock wave front. Owing to this, the shock wave
and the contact surface velocities become equal, the plug size reaches maximum and remains
unchanged. The flow becomes steady as in the steady bow shock distance from the blunt body
in a supersonic flow, when the gas inflow across the shock wave front becomes equal to the
outflow across sonic lines and, to the flow along the side surfaces of the body. The gas flow
between the shock wave front and the contact surface is isentropic. The gas velocity behind the
shock is determined in accordance with the conservation laws depending on the velocity of the
shock wave front.
The range of problems of heat and mass transfer to be solved on shock tubes covers an
analysis of dynamic and thermal loads of intricately shaped bodies exposed to blast waves, heat
transfer by radiation under joint action of radiation and convection, fluid dynamics of jet flows,
interaction of jets, investigation of gas outflow (heated by the shock wave) from the jet at the
tube end, and heat transfer during external flow around bodies.

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 Figure 11: Experimental Plots for density, velocity and pressure

 Prime Research Laboratories in India working with Shock tubes:

• Hypersonic and Shock Wave Research (LHSR), IISc Bangalore
• Shock tube Facility, Indian Institute of space science and technology
• Shock tube Tunnel, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre
• Gas Dynamics and Rarefied Gas Dynamics Laboratory, IIT – Madras

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