An Analysis of Flow Properties of Shock Tube Boundary Layer

Ice crystal behaviors in the upper atmosphere are very unknown and under-researched, leaving them a mystery as to how they might interact with objects traveling through this region. Currently the University of North Dakota Aerosol Engineering Laboratory is creating an experiment to drop an ice crystal through a vale on a shock tube. This project aimed to solve for properties of the air flow traveling through the shock tube to see how it might affect the falling ice crystal. These properties included Reynolds number, boundary layer thickness, wall shear stress, and velocity contours of the boundary layer. Through Excel and MATLAB calculations with Blasius boundary layer equations, a few notable results were found. The boundary layers—under the assumption of laminar flow—were found to be quite thin, and therefore the boundary layers inside the shock tube would not interfere with each other, causing more turbulence for the ice crystal to confront. Contours were also produced to show the gradient of velocity through the boundary layer, which can lead to further work being done on