Characterizing remotely acquired pressure measurements from shock tube experiments

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-2172.vid In recent years, the demand for using pressure scanning modules for unsteady aerodynamic measurements has increased. One of the key technical obstacles for implementing these devices is confirming the high-frequency reconstruction capabilities of remotely acquired pressure measurements. Due to the near instantaneous pressure rise of a shock, this flow feature exhibits a significant amount of high frequency content for which the ability to reconstruct remotely acquired pressure measurements can be evaluated against. To provide a laboratory scale source for near instantaneous pressure steps, a small and relatively low-pressure shock tube was fabricated. In this work, the shock tube was characterized, and the current capabilities and limitations of pressure reconstruction techniques were explored. Pressure reconstructions captured some key features when compared to measurements from directly wall-embedded transducers, and reconstruction accuracy increased significantly after initial pressure pulses. Further, reconstructed pressure measurement were used to calculate incident Mach number, incident shock pressure, and reflected shock pressure values at a range of driver pressures more consistently and accurately than remote measurements.