Physical mechanism for prolonged test duration in shock tubes

The main challenge in the operation of shock tubes is the very short test time. Hence, this work was carried out to optimize the ratio of driver section to driven section length and to investigate its effect on the test time in a shock tube. Three different cases were tested in this paper for driver to driven tube length ratio of 2, 1, and 0.5. The study was conducted numerically using ANSYS Fluent CFD solver and k-epsilon realizable turbulent model. The shock wave strength and speed were monitored at two different locations downstream the driven tube for diaphragm pressure ratio of 10. The numerical model was verified with experimental measurements in a shock tube apparatus at the College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia (UNITEN). From the numerical and experimental data, the primary shock strength was very comparable, while using low pressure ratio of 10. Subsequently, higher pressure ratio of 20 and 30 were implemented and the results were compared to select the longest test time. A driver section to driven section ratio of 2 resulted in a longer test time of approximately of 20 ms. In addition, insignificant reduction in the test duration of about 5 % was observed after increasing the driver tube pressure to 30 kPa. In contrast, higher peak pressure was recorded for pressure ratio of 30 for all three cases.