Design of water shock tube for testing shell materials

This paper presents design considerations for a shock tube experimental rig used to investigate the dynamic failure mechanisms of shell geometries subjected to water shock impact loading. In such setup, it is desirable that the drive pressure used within the tube can provide a wide range of impulsive loads on the test structures and some flexibility can be achieved on the applied pulse durations. With this aim a review of various existing shock tube experimental setup is presented and choices are made based on scientific merits. Finally design parameters are drawn for right set of conditions required for the experiments.