Laser-plasma induced shock waves in micro shock tubes

Abstract

Shock wave generation with help of lasers or shock tubes, for example, is a common subject at macroscopic scale. On the other hand, the current tendency towards smaller scales becomes more and more important. In particular, shock waves in small channels or tubes with sub-mm or micron-sized diameter have attracted much interest within the last years. But downscaling of shock wave effects such as pressure decrease and Mach number attenuation during propagation, viscous and heat effects, laminar and turbulent flow is not necessarily straightforward from macro to micro or even nano range. Although several theoretical investigations are available in this new field, there is a strong demand on experiments, which are mostly missing due to the lack of suitable methods. The present work introduces a novel method for the generation of shock waves at microscale, namely laser-induced micro shock waves (LIMS). The LIMS method applies a femtosecond laser to induce an optical breakdown in a thin aluminum target located at the entrance of a micro tube. Subsequently, a shock wave is launched by the high pressure aluminum plasma and starts propagating into the tube. The topical work presents, for the first time, experimental investigations on direct micro shock wave generation and propagation at well-defined conditions in micron-sized tubes. They are performed for different conditions and tubes down to 50 μm diameter. Different from previous shock wave investigations in the mm-diameter range that involve pressure transducers, the present work applies non-contact measurements by optical methods. The experiments are supported by additional simulations. A one-dimensional numerical hydrocode is applied to simulate the shock wave generation process. Further propagation of the shock in a micro tube is analyzed by solving two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations. Both simulations agree well with the experimental results.