Attenuation of a shock wave passing through a cloud of water droplets

Abstract

The mitigation of a planar shock wave caused by a cloud of calibrated water droplets was studied both experimentally and numerically. Experiments were carried out, with different shock wave Mach numbers ranging from 1.1 to 1.8, in a vertical shock tube coupled with a droplet generator which produced a well-characterized cloud of droplets of 120, 250 and 500 μm in diameter. By exploiting such an experimental set-up, we successfully measured the attenuation of a normal shock wave when passing through the water droplet cloud. This series of experiments allowed to identify the main parameters of this investigation and a clear dependence between the attenuation of the shock wave and terms governing the regimes of droplet breakup has been found. On the other hand, to support this experimental approach, 1D unsteady calculations were performed in similar configurations. Although the mathematical model based on an Eulerian/Eulerian approach was actually incomplete, the first comparisons between the experiments and the simulations were rather interesting and pointed out the need to improve the physical model, by taking into account the fragmentation and the vaporization of the droplets submitted to the shock wave as well as the size distribution of the water spray.