Numerical simulation of flow characteristics in micro shock tubes

Abstract

Recently micro shock tubes have been widely used in many engineering and industrial fields, but the characteristics of unsteady flow are not well known to date in micro shock tubes. Compared to conventional shock tubes with macro scales, flows related to shock waves in micro shock tubes are highly complicated. Stronger viscous and dissipative interactions make shock wave dynamic behaviors significantly different from theoretical predictions. In the present study, a CFD work was applied to the unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations which were solved using a fully implicit finite volume scheme. The diaphragm pressure ratio and shock tube diameter were varied to investigate their effects on micro shock tube flows. Different wall boundary conditions were also performed to observe shock wave and contact surface propagation with no slip and slip walls. Detailed flow characteristics at the foot of shock wave and contact surface propagation were known from the present numerical simulations.