The use of micro shock tubes has become common in many instruments requiring a high velocity and temperature flow field, for example in micro-propulsion systems and drug delivery devices for medical systems. A shock tube has closed ends, and the flow is generated by the rupture of a diaphragm separating a driver gas at high pressure from a driven gas at relatively low pressure. The rupture results in the movement of a shock wave and contact discontinuity into the low-pressure gas, and an expansion wave into the high pressure gas. The characteristics of the resulting unsteady flow for micro shock tubes are not well known as the physics of such tubes includes additional phenomena such as rarefaction and complex viscous effects at low Reynolds numbers. In the present study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations are made for unsteady compressible flow within a micro shock tube using the van-Leer MUSCL scheme and the two-layerturbulence model. Novel results have been obtained and discussed of the effects of using different diaphragm pressure ratios, shock tube diameters and wall boundary conditions, namely no slip and slip walls.

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The importance of micro-shock tubes is growing in line with recent developments of microscale technology for products like micro-heat engines and micro-propulsion systems. The flow dynamics within a micro-shock tube are different from those found in a macro shock tube, and knowledge of these dynamics is not as yet well established, as the flow within these tubes includes extra physics namely rarefaction and complex effects due to viscosity. Studies have recently been made with assumed initial condition of instantaneous diaphragm rupture producing centred shock and expansion waves. However, for a real case, the diaphragm ruptures over a finite time causing a period of partial rupture and this will change the shock characteristics. The work here reports on a series of axisymmetric numerical simulations carried out to calculate the influence of an initial finite-time diaphragm rupture. Rarefaction effects were taken into account by the use of Maxwell's slip velocity and temperature conditions. Use of an initial finite-time diaphragm rupture boundary condition causes the forming of a non-centred shock wave downstream of the diaphragm, and, the shock propagation distance is considerably reduced by use of the finite-time rupture process.

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