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Vibration isolation in a free-piston driven expansion tube facility

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Abstract

The stress waves produced by rapid piston deceleration are a fundamental feature of free-piston driven expansion tubes, and wave propagation has to be considered in the design process. For lower enthalpy test conditions, these waves can traverse the tube ahead of critical flow processes, severely interfering with static pressure measurements of the passing flow. This paper details a new device which decouples the driven tube from the free-piston driver, and thus prevents transmission of stress waves. Following successful incorporation of the concept in the smaller X2 facility, it has now been applied to the larger X3 facility, and results for both facilities are presented.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Mr B. Loughrey and Mr F. De Beurs for technical support; the Australian Research Council for support and funding; the Queensland Smart State Research Facilities Fund 2005 for support and funding; the Australian Space Research Program and UQ for their funding in support of the “Scramjet-based Access-to-Space Systems” (SCRAMSPACE) project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    D. E. Gildfind, P. A. Jacobs & R. G. Morgan

Authors
  1. D. E. Gildfind
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  2. P. A. Jacobs
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  3. R. G. Morgan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to D. E. Gildfind.

Additional information

Communicated by K. Hannemann.

A shorter version of this paper was presented at the 18th Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, December 2012.

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Gildfind, D.E., Jacobs, P.A. & Morgan, R.G. Vibration isolation in a free-piston driven expansion tube facility. Shock Waves 23, 431–438 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00193-013-0433-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00193-013-0433-z

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