Double-diaphragm shock tube at the Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute

Results of numerical calculations of the flow in a double-diaphragm shock tube with a tailored contact surface are reported. The calculations were carried out using a model of an ideal shock tube allowing for the real properties of the driver gas at high pressures and equilibrium thermodynamics of the processes behind the shock waves at Mach numbers M _s1 of the shock wave in the working gas varying in the range 5–25. Flow regimes with a tailored contact surface were obtained for Mach numbers M _s1=6.3, 11, and 15 using the double-diaphragm shock tube at the Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute. Under these conditions, the parameters of the working gas were kept constant for more than 1 ms. The calculated data were compared with the experimental results and it was shown that the calculated data may be used to determine the section lengths in a double-diaphragm shock tube and to estimate its operating time. The calculated values of the initial pressure in the sections of the tube were substantially lower than those achieved experimentally. Measurements were made of the static pressure along the axis of a conical nozzle during the expansion of hydrogen (initial temperature T ₀=293 K) and shock-heated nitrogen (T ₀=4000 K). It is found that the expansion of hydrogen is accompanied by deactivation of the rotational degrees of freedom, and that partial freezing of the vibrational degrees of freedom takes place in the nitrogen stream. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 67, 88–95 (November 1997)