Generation of cylindrical converging shock waves based on shock dynamics theory

Abstract

A simple but effective technique is proposed to generate cylindrical converging shock waves. The shock dynamics is employed to design a curved wall profile of the test section in a shock tube. When a planar shock wave propagates forward along the curved wall, the disturbances produced by the curved wall would continuously propagate along the shock surface and bend the shock wave. As an example, the wall profile for an incident shock Mach number of M0=1.2 and a converging angle of 15° is tested numerically and experimentally. Both numerical and experimental results show a perfect circular shock front, which validates our method.