VISUALIZATION OF FOCUSING SHOCK WAVES USING A SHOCK TUBE

Converging shock waves were visualized by optical shadowgraph technique. The converging shock waves were generated by reflecting an initially plane shock wave from a parabolically concave wall and thereby the behavior of the converging reflected shock wave could be well understood. The experment was carried out in a conventional shock tube with air as driver and driven gases and measured shock Mach number was 1.13. Thus optically visualized shock waves were compared with the computer shadowgraphs of computed focusing shock shape and fairly good agreement was obtained.