Validation of CFD Modeling and Simulation of a Shock Tube

Abstract

Principally there are two major ways to solve the real world problems. The first is experimental and other is numerical approach. Former seeks to establish physical laws by experimentations while the later involves the solution of physical laws of nature written often in form of complex differential and integral calculus with advent of availability of high speed computation devices the latter is gaining importance due to obvious reason of saving of time, money and effort. The present work is another effort to simulate a shock wave for studying the response of different materials. The shock tube is widely used for high strain rate testing in many engineering and industrial applications. As the experimental tests on shock tube are time consuming and lot of material is consumed hence using computational based numerical simulation which is helpful in reducing time, effort and cost. This intends to make prediction of wave propagation easy and minimizes the need of experimental testing. Compared to experimental shock tube the simulated shock tube can be helpful to predict the pressure contours and pressure-time graph. In this research paper, a CFD modeling and simulation study was conducted on a computational shock tube which behaves as that of actual shock tube setup. Using boundary conditions actual shock tube environment is reproduced in the simulation setup. The pressure values obtained during experiment has been patched in ANSYS CFD module. The best effort for solver setup, turbulence models comparison and meshing variation has been done for more accuracy. Overall, CFD modeling and simulation method used for current study are able to validate the results of the experimental data accurately for pressure values generated in driver and driven section of shock tube.