Shock-wave induced instability in internal explosion dynamics

A. Bagabir, D. Drikakis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The paper presents an investigation of flow instabilities occurring in shock-wave propagation and interaction with the walls of an enclosure. The shock-wave propagation is studied in connection with perturbed and unperturbed cylindrical blasts, initially placed in the centre of the enclosure, as well as for three different blast intensities corresponding to Mach numbers M s= 2, 5 and 10. The instability is manifested by a symmetry-breaking of the flow even for the case of an initially perfectly-symmetric blast. It is shown that the symmetry-breaking initiates around the centre of the enclosure as a result of the interaction of the shock waves reflected from the walls, with the low-density region in the centre of the explosion. The instability leads to fast attenuation of the shock waves, especially for smaller initial blast intensities. The computations reveal that the vortical flow structures arising from the multiple shock reflections and flow instability are Mach number dependent. The existence of perturbations of large amplitude in the initial condition strengthens the instability and has significant effects on the instantaneous wall pressure distributions. The computational investigation has been performed using high-resolution Riemann solvers for the gas dynamic equations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)537-553
Number of pages17
JournalAeronautical Journal
Volume109
Issue number1101
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2005
Externally publishedYes

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