Development and Assessment of a Hypersonic Shock Experimental Facility

Document Type

Presentation

Date of Original Version

3-27-2026

Abstract

This work presents an evaluation of a hypersonic shock facility developed for material testing applications. Shock tubes operate based on high-pressure to low-pressure flow mechanics to generate controlled shock waves. The present design incorporates a converging nozzle between the high- and low-pressure sections to amplify the reflected-to-incident pressure ratio, while a pseudo-vacuum in the low-pressure section enables the generation of hypersonic flow velocities. The muzzle end of the shock tube was modified with a structural fixture to secure a test plate coupon. During experiments, the pressure loading on the plate and its displacement field were synchronized and recorded. The displacement field was captured using three-dimensional Digital Image Correlation (3D DIC) with two high-speed cameras. The results demonstrate that the developed shock tube can generate Mach 7 shock waves, achieving a peak reflected-to-incident pressure ratio of 12. Given that the theoretical limit of this ratio is 8, these findings highlight that the converging nozzle amplifies the maximum pressure by increasing the particle velocity trailing the shock front. Combining the measured pressure and displacement data allows for determining the structure’s energy histories, including work, strain energy, and kinetic energy, enabling a detailed analysis of the mechanical response under hypersonic shock loading conditions. The time duration of the analysis is limited by the distortion fields observed in the DIC results, which are caused by compressed gas, although this was designed to occur after peak displacements for the specimens used.

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