Operating characteristics of a 60 cm and a 10 cm electric arc-driven shock-tubeThis paper describes the current status of the operating characteristics of the electric arc-driven shock-tube facility at Ames Research Center, focusing on its potential usefulness in the current and anticipated future applications. The paper specifically addresses the questions as to: (1) how well the behavior of the arc driver is understood and controlled, (2) how well the facility is equipped to test low-density, very-high-velocity nonequilibrium flow regimes, and (3) how closely the facility is expected to produce an equilibrium hypersonic flow when operated in shock-tunnel modes. For these issues, it is shown that: (1) a plasma kinetics model of the exploding wire closely describes the arc behavior in the driver, (2) the facility can produce a spectroscopically-clean flow in a low density regime with a shock velocity of 13 km/sec in air when used with an aluminum driven tube, and (3) when operated as a shock-tunnel, the high enthalpy flow in the test section is expected to deviate only slightly from the perfect equilibrium flow conditions at enthalpies corresponding to flight speeds of 5 km/sec or less.
Document ID
19880034876
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Sharma, Surendra P. (NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Park, Chul (NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Dannenberg, Robert E. (Kendan Associates Mountain View, CA, United States)