Transient shock wave flows in tubes with a sudden change in cross section

This paper describes propagation of shock waves within circular cross-section shock tubes with a sudden area change in cross section. A dispersion-controlled scheme was used to solve the Euler equations assuming axisymmetric flows. For experimental visualizations an aspheric cylindrical test section was designed to keep collimated incident light rays parallel once they were reflected or refracted on the inner and outer surfaces of the test section. For effective comparisons with experimental results, equivalent numerical interferograms were constructed to demonstrate effectiveness of the numerical method and verify the observed shock-wave phenomena. The numerical method was used to calculate three further cases with variations of the initial shock-wave Mach number and the flow geometry to clarify the role of these parameters. Complex transient shock-wave phenomena, such as shock-wave reflection, shock/vortex interaction and shock-wave focusing were observed in these cases, and interpreted with shock wave theory. In addition, the research clearly shows that combination of CFD with experiments is effective to highlight physical phenomena in axisymmetric flows.