ANALYSIS OF A PISTON-DRIVEN SHOCK TUBE.

A description is given of a shock tube in which a piston is placed inside the driver. Raising the pressure on one side of the piston relative to the other side will cause the piston to accelerate toward the lower-pressure side of the driver. The piston will compress the gas in front of it, thus producing the required high pressure and temperature simultaneously. In the proposed technique, two modes of operation are available - namely, a constant volume mode of operation for use when the main object is to achieve the highest possible M//s, and a constant pressure mode of operation for use when the dominant requirement is to have a long flow time.