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The enhancement of shock wave loads by means of porous media

Chapter · January 1992

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-77648-9_39

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G. Ben-Dor Gedalya Mazor

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev sami shamoon college of engineering, israel
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Ozer Igra S. Sorek

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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The enhancement of shock wave loads by means of porous
media
G. Ben-Dor, G. Mazor, G. Cederbaum, o. Igra and S. Sorek
Pearlstone Center for Aeronautical engineering Studies, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben-Gurion Uni-
versity of the Negev, Beer Sheva, ISRAEL

Abstract. The enhancement of shock wave loads on the end-wall of a shock tube owing to its
coating by a porous medium was investigated numerically. The results indicate that the pressure
acting on the shock tube end-wall can be amplified significantly.

Key words: Shock reflection, Porous media

1. Introduction
Experimental studies of the head-on collision of planar shock waves with porous compressible
foams revealed a number of unique and interesting features. Gelfand et al. (1975) showed that
the maximum pressure on the shock tube end wall behind a polyurethane foam can significantly
exceed the pressure which is obtained in a direct head-on collision of an identical planar shock wave
from a bare rigid end wall of the shock tube. Gvozdeva et al. (1985) investigated experimentally
the head-on collision of a planar shock wave with a wall covered with layers of porous compressible
materials of various thicknesses. Their experimental study revealed that the maximum pressure
at the end-wall of the shock tube increases as the thickness of the porous material increases until
a thickness of about 80 mm, beyond which the maximum pressure reaches an approximately
constant value which depends upon the type of the material and the initial conditions of the
experiment. Similar results were reported by Skews et al. (1991) who also found that the foam
considerably amplified the end-wall pressure. In addition to Gvozdeva et al. (1985) and Skews et
al. (1991), experiments indicated that the velocity of the front edge of the porous material was
constant. An additional experimental study regarding this subject that should be mentioned is
the most recent study of Henderson et al. (1990) who showed, using long foam speciments (1600
mm), that the initial transmitted compression wave in the foam, as measured by pressure gauges,
was not a shock wave but a band of compression waves.
The present study was aimed at developing a computer code which could successfully simulate
the head-on collision of a planar shock wave with a porous material backed by the end-wall of
the shock tube, and using the developed computer code to numerically investigate and better
understand the phenomena.

2. Present study
The problem to be solved is shown schematically in Fig. 1. An incident planar shock propagates
from left to right inside a shock tube in a gas (initially at rest and pressure pd at a constant
velocity V. towards a foam medium having a cross section A identical to that of the shock tube
and length L. The foam is supported at its rear edge by the end-wall of the shock tube. At
t = to the shock wave collides head-on with the front edge of the foam, reflects from it backwards
and imposes on its front edge a high pressure which compresses the foam. Since the foam is
bounded by the shock tube walls it cannot expand either in the y or z axes and since it is
backed up by a rigid wall at its rear edge, it experiences a uni-axial strain compression for which
c'" =F O,cy = O,cz = 0,0'", =F O,uy =F 0 and U z =F O.

K. Takayama (ed.), Shock Waves

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1992
280 Shock in porous media

fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the problem under consideration

3. Assumptions
The assumptions upon which the model was developed are:
The flow field is one-dimensional;
The gas is a~ ideal fluid, i.e., inviscid (I' = 0) and thermally non-conductive (k=O);
The gas behaves as a perfect gas, i.e., its equation of state is p = pRT and its internal
energy is given by e = CvT, where p, p and T are the gas pressure, density and temperature,
respectively, C v is its specific heat at constant volume and R is its specific gas constant;
The body forces are negligible;
Following Gibson and Ashby (1988) the foam can be treated as a uniform solid phase in
which the mechanical properties are related to its structure and to the material properties
from which the cell walls of the pores of the porous medium are made. Thus, its mechanical
properties are expressed as a funciton of its relative density p. / p. (p. is the density of the
foam and p. is the density of the material from which the foam is made). In addition the
foam properties depend on whether its cells are open or closed;
- the foam is an isotropic compressible body;
- The friction forces acting on the external surfaces of the foam are negligibly small;
- Stresses developed in the foam are uniformly distributed inside any cross-sectional area per-
pendicular to the x-axis. Therefore, the cross-sectional area remains planar throughout the
deformation of the foam.
Based on the above assumptions the governing equations of the problem under consideration
were developed (for details see Mazor et al. 1991). The set of the governing equations consists of
ten equations with the following ten dependent variables:
p c density of the gaseous phase
p - static pressure of the gaseous phase
T - temperature of the gaseous phase
Ug - velocity of the gaseous phase
x - Lagrangian location in the gaseous phase
p. - density of the porous foam
u· - stress of the porous foam
€; - strain in the x-direction of the porous foam
S - Lagrangian location in the porous foam
U· - velocity of the porous foam
The governing equations were transformed into a set of central finite difference equations
using the artificial viscosity method. More details regarding the numerical scheme can be found
in Mazor (1989).
 Shock in porous media 281

4. Results and discussion

The developed computer code was used to simulate the head-on collision of planar shock waves
with an open cell flexible polyurethane foam (P. = 1l00kg/m3 , E. = 45x10 6 N/m 2 and iJ. =
0.45) and an open cell rubber foam (P. = 1000kg/m3 , E. = 2.6x10 6 , N/m 2 and iJ. = 0.47). The
relative densities of the foams were p' / P. = 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 and the lengths of the foams were 1,
2, 5 and 10 cm.
The investigated incident shock wave Mach numbers were M.=2 and 5. The initial flow and
foam conditions in all the simulations were P1=1 atm, T1=300K, U1=0, u;=l atm and A=O.Ol
m 2•
The pressure histories acting on the shock tube end wall for p' / P. =0.2, M.=2 both for
polyurethane and rubber foams, as a function of their length, are shown in Figs.2a and 2b. It is
clearly seen that the maximum pressure increases as the length of the porous material increases,
up to a critical length, Lor, beyond which the maximum pressure seems to attain a constant value.

7
18 r------------, P/P5s RUBBER FOAM
16 PIPs, POLYURETHANE FOAM
plps·0.2 6 - L-2
'il Ps • 0.2

14 L=2
~\
II
~
,1
, I
5 L=I
~
L=5
(',
I
12 L=I
I L=5
!: 4
I
I
,,
, I
10 L=IO' , L=IOI

,,, ,,,
I , I

,,
8 3 I

,,, ,,,
I
6 I

,, ,,
I
I
4 I
: ' L=O I

I
2 LaO : tlms] I t Ims]
I
oL-~tlttt=h=~w=~Cj o '..
2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. The enhancement in the pressure as a function of the length of the foam and its density for a) polyurethane
foam and b) rubber foam

As shown by Mazor (1989) the critical length Lor is the length required for the compression
waves to coalesce into a shock wave. As long as L < Lor the end wall of the shock tube is hit by
a band of compression waves which result in an increase in the pressure. The longer L the higher
is the pressure since more compression waves reach the end wall. However, once L reaches the
critical value, where a shock wave is formed, the end wall is always hit by the same transmitted
shock wave and hence the resulted pressure at the end wall remains constant.
Note from Fig. 2a that due to the presence of the porous material there is a drastic en-
hancement in the pressure at the end-wall as compared to the pressure that is obtained when an
identical shock wave reflects head-on from a rigid wall without the presence of any material. This
will be further illustrated subsequently. A comparison between Fig. 2a and 2b indicates that while
the critical length is about 5 cm in the case of a polyurethane foam, it is about 2 cm when the
foam is made of rubber. The reason for this lies in the fact that the velocity of the compression
waves is about 4 times faster in the polyurethane foam than in the rubber foam.
Figures 3a and b show the maximum pressures as a function of the length of the foam material
for polyurethane and rubber foams, respectively. For both cases (M.=2) five different values of
p' / P. are simulated. The earlier-mentioned dependence of the maximum pressure obtained at the
rear edge of the porous material (Le., at the end wall) as a function of its length is clearly seen.
 282 Shock in porous media

120
400 Pmox- P5s [ bar] Pmo )( - P5S [ bar]
11',·0.1
350 100

300
80
0.2
250
0.2 60
200 FOAM

150 POLYURETHANE FOAM

0.5
100
0.5 1.0
50 L [em]
1.0 Uem].

5 6 7 8 9 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(0) (b)
fig. 3. The pressure history at the end wall of a shock tube for various lengths of foam; a) polyurethane foam and
b) rubber foam

In addtion it is seen from Figs.3a and b that the smaller p' / p. the larger Lcr is and the greater is
the maximum pressure. In the case of p' / p.=O.1 the maximum pressure can reach values which
are about 340 bar higher than the pressure that would have been obtained had an identical shock
wave collided head-on with the end-wall of the shock tube without any porous material. (Note
that far M.=2, PS./Pl =15.) Although in the case of a rubber foam the maximum pressures reach
smaller values than those reached in the case af a polyurethane foam, the enhancement in the
pressure at the end-wall of the shock tube is still very significant.

5. Conclusions

It has been shown that the pressure acting on the end-wall of the shock tube can be amplified
significantly by means of porous foams. For example, by using polyurethane foams the pressure
acting on the end wall of the shock tube can be increased from 1.5 MPa to about 35.0 MPa.
Hence the foregoing study provides a simple pressure amplifying technique which could easily be
utilized for many purposes.

References

Gelfand BE, Gubin SA (1975) Study of special features of propagation and reflection of pressure
waves in porous medium. Sov Phys-Appl Math and Tech Phys 6:74-77
Gibson LJ, Ashby MF (1988) Cellular Solids: Structure and Properties Pergamon Press, England
Gvozdeva LG, Faresov YuM, Fokeev VP (1985) Interaction of air shock waves with porous com-
pressible materials. J Appl Mech and Tech Phys 3:401-405
Henderson LF, Virgona RJ, Di J, Gvozdeva LG (1990) Refraction of a normal shock wave from
nitrogen into polyurethane foam. In: Kim YW (ed) Current Topics in Shock Waves, American
Inst of Phys, New York, pp 814-818
Mazor G (1989) The influence of surface properties on the head-on reflection of shock waves.
Ph.D. Thesis, Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel (in Hebrew)
Skews BW, Atkins MD, Seitz MW (1991) Gas dynamic and physical behaviour of compressible
porous foams struck by a weak shock wave. In: Takayama K (ed) Shock Waves, Proc of the
18th ISSW

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