Technological progress demands accurate measurements of rapidly changing pressures. This, in turn, requires the use of dynamically calibrated pressure meters. The shock tube enables the dynamic characterization by applying an almost ideal pressure step change to the pressure sensor under calibration. This paper evaluates the effect of the dynamic response of a side-wall pressure measurement system on the detection of shock wave passage times over the side-wall pressure sensors installed along the shock tube. Furthermore, it evaluates this effect on the reference pressure step signal determined at the end-wall of the driven section using a time-of-flight method. To determine the errors in the detection of the shock front passage times over the centers of the side-wall sensors, a physical model for simulating the dynamic response of the complete measurement chain to the passage of the shock wave was developed. Due to the fact that the use of the physical model requires information about the effective diameter of the pressure sensor, special attention was paid to determining the effective diameter of the side-wall pressure sensors installed along the shock tube. The results show that the relative systematic errors in the pressure step amplitude at the end-wall of the shock tube due to the errors in the detection of the shock front passage times over the side-wall pressure sensors are less than 0.0003%. On the other hand, the systematic errors in the phase lag of the end-wall pressure signal in the calibration frequency range appropriate for high-frequency dynamic pressure applications are up to a few tens of degrees. Since the target phase measurement uncertainty of the pressure sensors used in high-frequency dynamic pressure applications is only a few degrees, the corrections for the systematic errors in the detection of the shock front passage times over the side-wall pressure sensors with the use of the developed physical dynamic model are, therefore, necessary when performing dynamic calibrations of pressure sensors with a shock tube.

The most important uncertainty component of the pressure step signal determined at the end-wall of the shock tube is associated with the uncertainties of the shock wave velocity and the arrival time of the shock front. Both are determined using a timeof-flight method and are therefore greatly affected by the errors in the detected times of the shock wave passages over the side-wall pressure sensors installed along the shock tube. This paper introduces a method for an automated correction of the systematic errors due to non-ideal dynamic response of the side-wall pressure sensors.