Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
A shock tube is a facility that produces fast and A relatively high temperature flows by driving a strong shock wave into quiescent gas. From simple shock tube theory it is possible to show that in order to obtain high Mach number primary shock waves one should employ a very light driving gas at the highest pressure and temperature possible. These conditions are most commonly met by the explosion of a stochiometric mixture of inflammable gases, such as oxygen and hydrogen diluted with helium.