Explosion Attenuation of Foams
As part of an an external consulting contract, foam samples were exposed to shock wave loading. The shock tube used consists of a 10 cm diameter circular driver section and a 7.5 cm square driven section. The driver and driven sections are 1.97 m and 2.58 m long, respectively. A double diaphragm, located between the driver and driven sections, makes it possible to reproducibly fire the shock tube at the same driver pressure. This allows the testing of all the foam samples with the same shock strength. For all tests the driver section was pressurized to 13.2 bar. This produced an incident shock wave that propagates at a velocity of 745±12 m/s. This strength shock wave has a theoretical shock pressure ratio of 5.08 (or shock pressure of 0.51 MPa). The measured reflected shock wave pressure is 2 MPa. The pressure recorded by a transducer flush mounted on the top of the driven section, 15.2 cm from the endplate, as well as two transducers flush mounted on the endplate were provided for all tests. A final report was provided to the client.