Stability of converging cylindrical shock waves

An experimental and numerical study was made of converging cylindrical shock waves. The goal of the present study was to clarify the movement and instability of the converging cylindrical shock waves. Experiments were conducted in an annular shock tube of 230 mm o.d. and 210 mm i.d. connected to a cylindrical test section of 210 mm diameter. Double exposure holographic interferometry was used to visualize the converging cylindrical shock waves. Incident shock Mach numbers ranged between 1.1 and 2.0 in air. A numerical simulation was conducted using the TVD finite difference scheme. It was found in the experiments that although the initial shock wave configuration looked cylindrical, it was gradually deformed with propagation towards the center and finally showed mode-four instability. This is attributable to the existence of initial disturbances which were introduced by the struts which supported the inner tube of the annular shock tube. This trend was significant for stronger shock waves indicating that at the last stage of shock wave convergence the initial perturbations of the converging cylindrical shock wave were amplified to form the triple point of Mach reflection. The numerical results correctly predicted the experimental trend.This article was processed using Springer-Verlag T_EX Shock Waves macro package 1990.