Manufacturing of Closed-End Gas Driven Shock Tube

Shock tube is an equipment in which by creating a pressure difference between driver and driven sections and bursting membrane has the ability of generating shock wave with very short rise time. The most important applications of shock tube that can be mentioned are the calibration of dynamic pressure sensors, studying of shock wave parameters and the behavior of structures and also the vital tissues under dynamic loading. In this study, manufacturing of a shock tube with the ability of increasing pressure up to 100 bar (in driver section) which is equivalent to the explosion of 21 kilograms of TNT at a distance of 3.3 meters from the membrane’s location was placed on the agenda. Other important manufacturing features that was considered as the abilities of this structure are making a shock wave with a maximum speed of 2.5 Mach and also the possibility of generating a reflection wave with a pressure peak of 2.6 MPa at the speed of 2 Mach, however by changing the type of gas and make a difference in temperature between the driver and driven sections, these values can be increased considerably. Gas driven shock tube design is based on three main parts, which eventually the structure is made in length and nominal diameter of 4.5 meters and 3 inches respectively. To ensure the accuracy of shock tube’s performance and to investigate the system leakage some several static and dynamic experiments by bursting of different membranes was carried out.