EMRTC Shock Tube

Contact: Jerome Lattery or Paul Giannuzzi
Email: Click here to Email Jerome or Click here to Email Paul
Phone: 575.835.5312

Large diameter shock tube testing provides a source that that can produce blast pressures and durations that are of interest to the safety and security communities. Building components and vehicles are likely targets. A blast exposure that would require thousands of pounds of explosive in an open arena test can be done with about a hundred pounds of propane at the EMRTC shock tube. Reflected pressures of up to 100 psi can be attained just outside the end of the tube. The work presented here is concerned with a medium scale tube of 20 foot diameter and 100 foot length at EMRTC. Essential auxiliary technologies presented are blast geometry modeling by use of a subscale tube, a propane concentration sensor, and studies of stoichiometry.

Producing a blast in the shock tube requires configuring the tube for source characteristics. Typically, a zone within the tube is defined by placing a thin plastic membrane, or multiple membranes, across the diameter. The volume within a zone is then loaded by introducing gaseous propane. In the twenty foot tube introducing about 1.3 pounds of propane per linear foot of loaded length provides a stoichiometric mixture. Explosion of the mixture is then initiated by a grid of detonating fuse. The length of the zones and gas concentrations within them, as well as the position of the initiating charge, will affect the pressure and waveform.

EMRTC Shock Tube Experiments

• Fuel-Air Experiments offer a wide range of tailored waveforms.
• Overpressures up to 200 psi.
• Durations of up to 200 ms and impulses of 350 psi-ms.
  
• EMRTC 20 ft diameter Shock Tube can accommodate large targets inside and outside of the tube.
• Smaller Items can be tested with the EMRTC 2 ft diameter scale model
• Hydrocode and small scale modeling available for experiments where full scale testing is not an option.