An experimental and theoretical study of converging polygonal shock waves

Abstract.

An experimental investigation was carried out to explore the possibility of producing converging polygonal shocks in an essentially two-dimensional cavity. Previous calculations by Apazidis and Lesser (1996) suggested that such configurations could be produced by reflecting a cylindrical outgoing shock from a smoothly altered circular boundary, the alteration having n-gonal symmetry. In the experiments the outgoing shock was produced by a spark discharge which yielded shocks in the Mach number range from 1.1 to 1.7 at a radius just prior to the reflection. Polygonal shocks were observed as predicted by using a modified form of geometrical shock dynamics, derived in the above paper. In addition, the modified theory was used to calculate the results of an experiment carried out by Sturtevant and Kulkarny (1976). The results of the numerical calculations were found to be in substantial agreement with both experiments, suggesting that the modifications in geometrical shock dynamics for non-uniform flow ahead of an advancing shock are useful in the case of shock focusing. The experiment also showed that the polygonal shapes were stable in the examined range of shock Mach numbers, a result that may be of importance for a number of practical situations in which shock focusing is present.