Measurements of Diffraction of Shock Waves and Resulting Loading of Structures

Abstract

Abstract Although the idea of using a shock tube to generate waves of large amplitude and to study their properties is not new, nevertheless this technique has been improved greatly in recent years. This circumstance, taken together with good optical methods of measurement, has provided a powerful tool for the investigation of a great variety of problems in transient interactions of shocks and fluid flows with solid objects and with each other. This paper is concerned with the evolution in time of a flow pattern about an obstacle initially in still air, passed over by a sudden front of high-speed flow induced by a shock wave, the stream approaching a steady configuration. Such information is not only of interest in the theory of fluid dynamics but it also is of considerable practical importance, since the principal forces on the obstacle can be measured as a function of time, and the character of the loading determined. The main objective of this paper is to elucidate the method by giving examples of a great variety of experiments and at the same time to provide a large amount of basic data which may be used by others in various types of analyses.