Probing of Flow Fields with Shock Waves—The Swing Probe

Abstract

The one dimensional equations governing shock propagation into inhomogeneous media have been developed to allow a shock to be used as a probe. Shock waves which collide with unknown gas or plasma flow fields suffer a change in velocity. Pressure, density, particle velocity, and local energy input at the edge of an unknown flow can be determined from the measurement of unknown flow. The steady variation of the velocity of strong probing shocks reveals details of the local velocity and density distributions inside the unknown flow field. One further result is the extension of the general theory of shock propagation into inhomogeneous media to cover the case when an energy source term appears at the front.