A Table-top Blast Driven Shock Tube

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact, table-top shock tube driven by an explosive primer, enabling accessible and localized blast wave experiments for biomedical and material testing.

Contribution

It presents a simple, portable shock tube design using a rifle barrel and primer, improving accessibility for blast wave studies compared to traditional large-scale devices.

Findings

Design is compact and easy to operate.

Produces blast waves suitable for localized testing.

Facilitates laboratory studies of blast effects.

Abstract

The prevalence of blast-induced traumatic brain injury in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has motivated laboratory scale experiments on biomedical effects of blast waves and studies of blast wave transmission properties of various materials in hopes of improving armor design to mitigate these injuries. This paper describes the design and performance of a table-top shock tube that is more convenient and widely accessible than traditional compression driven and blast driven shock tubes. The design is simple: it is an explosive driven shock tube employing a rifle primer which explodes when impacted by the firing pin. The firearm barrel acts as the shock tube, and the shock wave emerges from the muzzle. The small size of this shock tube can facilitate localized application of a blast wave to a subject, tissue, or material under test.