Over forty years of continuous research at UTIAS on nonstationary flows and shock waves

Analytical and experimental research on non-stationary shock waves, rarefaction waves and contact surfaces has been conducted continuously at UTIAS since its inception in 1948. Some unique facilities were used to study the properties of planar, cylindrical and spherical shock waves and their interactions. Investigations were also performed on shock-wave structure and boundary layers in ionizing argon, water-vapour condensation in rarefaction waves, magnetogasdynamic flows, and the regions of regular and various types of Mach reflections of oblique shock waves. Explosively-driven implosions have been employed as drivers for projectile launchers and shock tubes, and as a means of producing industrial-type diamonds from graphite, and fusion plasmas in deuterium. The effects of sonic-boom on humans, animals and structures have also formed an important part of the investigations. More recently, interest has focussed on shock waves in dusty gases, the viscous and vibrational structure of weak spherical blast waves in air, and oblique shock-wave reflections. In all of these studies instrumentation and computational methods have played a very important role. A brief survey of this work is given herein and in more detail in the relevant references.This article was processed using Springer-Verlag T_EX Shock Waves macro package 1990.     

GPU accelerated CESE method for 1D shock tube problems

In the present study, a GPU accelerated 1D space–time CESE method is developed and applied to shock tube problems with and without condensation. We have demonstrated how to implement the CESE algorithm to solve 1D shock tube problems using an older generation GPU (the NVIDIA 9800 GT) with relatively limited memory. To optimize the code performance, we used Shared Memory and solved the inter-Block boundary problem in two ways, namely the branch scheme and the overlapping scheme. The implementations of these schemes are discussed in detail and their performances are compared for the Sod shock tube problems. For the Sod problem without condensation, the speedup over an Intel CPU E7300 is 23 for the branch scheme and 41 for the overlapping scheme, respectively. While for problems with condensation, both schemes achieve higher acceleration ratios, 53 and 71, respectively. The higher speedup of the condensation case can be ascribed to the source term calculation which has a local dependence on the mesh point and the SOURCE kernel has a higher acceleration ratio.     

Adaptive hierarchic transformations for dynamically p-enriched slope-limiting over discontinuous Galerkin systems of generalized equations

We study a family of generalized slope limiters in two dimensions for Runge–Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) solutions of advection-diffusion systems. We analyze the numerical behavior of these limiters applied to a pair of model problems, comparing the error of the approximate solutions, and discuss each limiter’s advantages and disadvantages. We then introduce a series of coupled p-enrichment schemes that may be used as standalone dynamic p-enrichment strategies, or may be augmented via any in the family of variable-in-p slope limiters presented.     

The multi-dimensional limiters for solving hyperbolic conservation laws on unstructured grids

Novel limiters based on the weighted average procedure are developed for finite volume methods solving multi-dimensional hyperbolic conservation laws on unstructured grids. The development of these limiters is inspired by the biased averaging procedure of Choi and Liu [10]. The remarkable features of the present limiters are the new biased functions and the weighted average procedure, which enable the present limiter to capture strong shock waves and achieve excellent convergence for steady state computations. The mechanism of the developed limiters for eliminating spurious oscillations in the vicinity of discontinuities is revealed by studying the asymptotic behavior of the limiters. Numerical experiments for a variety of test cases are presented to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed limiters.     

Dust ion-acoustic shock waves due to dust charge fluctuation in a superthermal dusty plasma

The nonlinear propagation of dust ion-acoustic (DIA) shock waves is studied in a charge varying dusty plasma with electrons having kappa velocity distribution. We use hot ions with equilibrium streaming speed and a fast superthermal electron charging current derived from orbit limited motion (OLM) theory. It is found that the presence of superthermal electrons does not only significantly modify the basic properties of shock waves, but also causes the existence of shock profile with only positive potential in such plasma with parameter ranges corresponding to Saturn?s rings. It is also shown that the strength and steepness of the shock waves decrease with increase of the size of dust grains and ion temperature.     

Shock wave interaction with porous plates

Previous detailed studies of the interaction of a shock wave with a perforated sheet considered the impact of a shock wave on a plate with regularly spaced slits giving area blockages of 60 and 67%, at various angles of incidence, and resulting in both regular and Mach reflection. The current work extends this study to a much wider variety of plate geometries. Blockage ratios of 20, 25, 33, 50, and 67 and inclinations of 45, 60, 75, and 90° to the shock wave were tested. Four different thicknesses of plate were tested at the same frontal blockage in order to assess the effects of gap guidance. Tests were conducted at two shock Mach numbers of 1.36 and 1.51 (inverse pressure ratios of 0.4 and 0.5). It is found that secondary reflected and transmitted waves appear due to the complex interactions within the grid gaps, and that the vortex pattern which is generated under the plate is also complex due to these interactions. The angle of the reflected shock, measured relative to the plate, decreases with plate blockage and the angle of inflow to the plate reduces with increasing blockage. By analysing the flow on the underside of the plate the pseudo-steady flow assumption is found to be a reasonable approximation. Both the pressure difference and the stagnation pressure loss across the plate are evaluated. It is found that over the range tested the plate thickness has a minimal effect.     

Axisymmetric shock wave interaction with a cone: a benchmark test

Results of the benchmark test are presented of comparing numerical schemes solving shock wave of M_s = 2.38 in nitrogen and argon interacting with a 43∘ semi-apex angle cone and corresponding experiments. The benchmark test was announced in Shock Waves Vol. 12, No. 4, in which we tried to clarify the effects of viscosity and heat conductivity on shock reflection in conical flows. This paper summarizes results of ten numerical and two experimental applications. State of the art in studies regarding the shock/cone interaction is clarified. PACS 01.50.Kw, 47.15.Pn Communicated by K. Takayama     

Ultrafast high repetition rate absorption spectroscopy of polymer shock compression

A dual-beam transient absorption spectrometer for high repetition rate (80 shocks per second) studies of shock compressed materials is described. The apparatus time response is 100 ps, so the time resolution of the shock compression process is generally limited by the shock transit time across the sample. In turn the sample thickness is limited by the sensitivity of the spectrometer. Using 400 nm thick samples of R640 dye aggregates in \textit{poly} methyl methacrylate (PMMA) and a 4.2 GPa laser-driven shock, transient absorption spectra show a shock induced absorption redshift occurring in 500 ps, considerably longer than the 200 ps shock front transit time (round trip) through the sample. This noninstantaneous shock compression is consistent with the $\sim 300$ ps viscoelastic response of PMMA at 4.2 GPa. Received 30 July 2001 / Accepted 13 March 2002 – Published online 17 June 2002