A New Shock-Tube Facility for the Study of High-temperature Chemical Kinetics

摘要

A new stainless steel shock-tube facility designed for the study of chemical kinetics at elevated temperatures and pressures is described. It consists of a single-pulse shock tube capable of using both lexan diaphragms and die-scored aluminum disks of up to 4 mm thick, and it has a relatively large driven-section inner diameter of 16.2 cm to minimize non-ideal boundary layer effects. Test times around 3 milliseconds are achievable at conditions ranging from temperatures between 600 and 4000 K and pressures between 1 and 100 atm behind the reflected shock wave. The facility includes a high-vacuum system capable of achieving ultimate pressures on the order of 1×10~(-6) torr, a new gas-delivery system, a shock velocity-measurement scheme, a computer-based data acquisition system and the option of implementing several optical diagnostics. Applications of the new facility include ignition delay time measurements, measurement of reaction rates coefficients and high-temperature spectroscopy, among others. Details of the set up and operation of the shock tube are provided.