Shock waves from an open-ended shock tube with different shapes

Abstract

A new method for decreasing the attenuation of a shock wave emerging from an open-ended shock tube exit into a large free space has been developed to improve the shock wave technique for cleaning deposits on the surfaces in industrial equipments by changing the tube exit geometry. Three tube exits (the simple tube exit, a tube exit with ring and a coaxial tube exit) were used to study the propagation processes of the shock waves. The detailed flow features were experimentally investigated by use of a two-dimensional color schlieren method and by pressure measurements. By comparing the results for different tube exits, it is shown that the expansion of the shock waves near the mouth can be restricted by using the tube exit with ring or the coaxial tube exit. Thus, the attenuation of the shock waves is reduced. The time histories of overpressure have illustrated that the best results are obtained for the coaxial tube exit. But the pressure signals for the tube exit with ring showed comparable results with the advantage of a relatively simple geometry. The flow structures of diffracting shock waves have also been simulated by using an upwind finite volume scheme based on a high order extension of Godunov's method as well as an adaptive unstructured triangular mesh refinement/unrefinement algorithm. The numberical results agree remarkably with the experimental ones.