Experimental and numerical study of shock-accelerated elliptic heavy gas cylinders

Abstract

We studied the evolution of elliptic heavy SF6 gas cylinder surrounded by air when accelerated by a planar Mach 1.25 shock. A multiple dynamics imaging technology has been used to obtain one image of the experimental initial conditions and five images of the time evolution of elliptic cylinder. We compared the width and height of the circular and two kinds of elliptic gas cylinders and analyzed the vortex strength of the elliptic ones. Simulations are in very good agreement with the experiments, but due to the different initial gas cylinder shapes, a certain difference of the initial density peak and distribution exists between the circular and elliptic gas cylinders, and the latter initial state is more sensitive and more inenarrable.