Experimental Study of Scale Effects on Shock Wave Interaction with a Granular Layer

Shock wave interaction with granular media has attracted great interest due to its relevance to many practical applications such as shock attenuation by granular filters [1] and powder densification and consolidation by shock waves [2]. The primary concern of recent investigations on this phenomenon is the stress enhancement by a granular material placed on a solid wall, instead of expected stress damping. Suzuki and Adachi [3] observed that the propagation of a shock wave over a solid wall covered with a thin dust layer gave rise to a peak in pressure profiles measured under the dust layer. Gelfand

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. [4] also verified that when a granular layer covered the end-wall of a vertical shock tube, the pressure measured at the end-wall after headon collision of a shock wave with the granular layer temporally became larger than that without granular material. In order to understand the fundamental mechanism of the stress enhancement, numerous experimental works ([5]–[12]) have been carried out using vertical shock tubes similar to that used by Gelfand

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.