Adv. Studies Theor. Phys., Vol. 6, 2012, no.

5, 233 - 244

Shock Wave Attenuation by Means

of Built-in Baffles in a Tube
T. Takiya1, F. Higashino2, M. Yaga3 and M. Han4
1

Hitachi Zosen Corporation, 2-2-11 Funamachi, Taisho, Osaka 551-0022, Japan

[email protected]

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16, Nakacho, Koganei,

Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
3

Faculty of Engineering, University of the Ryukyus, Senbaru- 1, Nishihara,

Okinawa 903-0213, Japan
4

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University,

22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
Abstract

The transient phenomena of incident shock waves during its passage

through an orifice, a diverging nozzle, and a conical disk as baffles in a
tube are numerically simulated. The influence of geometrical
configurations of the baffles on shock attenuation is investigated. The
results show that the conical disk was most effective configuration to
weaken the strength of transmitted shock waves, since the pressure close
to the inlet of the cone does not increase significantly while the
transmitted shock wave is passing downstream in the cone.
Keywords: shock wave, compressible fluid dynamics, beamline

1 Introduction
Investigations on the interaction of incident shock wave with baffles in a tube are
important from the viewpoint of industrial applications. Since the obstacles
provide significant attenuation of oncoming shock waves, they are suitably used
for protection against shock wave hazards. An orifice, a conical disk or a cone are
used as typical obstacles for an air ventilation system of public shelters, and
scientific facilities such as a system of synchrotron radiation beamlines that is

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basically composed of many long pipelines and vacuum pumps. Each pipeline of
the system has an acoustic delay line, a fast-closing valve and a photon shutter to
maintain the facility at low pressure. When a part of the pipeline is destroyed by
an abrupt accident, air surrounding the pipeline flows into a tube to generate
shock wave as well as contact discontinuity. In practice, one should plumb to
investigate this problem in the field of rarefied gas dynamics, since the initial
pressure in every beamline is extremely low. However it is worthy to investigate
the general feature of shock wave propagation and reflection in the range of
continuum mechanics [8, 9]. Even if the pressure jump across the shock front is
small, in general, various optical devices and pressure gauges mounted inside the
tube may be damaged by the shock wave, during the impingement of pressure and
density discontinuities on the devices [10].
In order to protect the facilities from such damages, various kinds of the obstacle
like an orifice, a conical baffle or a diverging nozzle are set in the tube. The
strength of transmitted shock wave may be attenuated due to the interaction
between the shock front and the obstacle.
In the past decade, several types of the obstacles with various configurations were
proposed to investigate the effective baffle-geometry called an acoustic delay line
to attenuate incident shock waves. Although few model experiments for the
acoustic delay line have been made, there are several discrepancies among various
gases used in the experiments. In many cases, a number of performance tests to
maintain the beamlines under high-vacuum conditions were temporarily examined
for each acoustic delay line, before shipping it from a factory[1-5]. Hitherto,
systematic inspections were rarely performed to evaluate the attenuation of
incident shocks by means of baffle obstacles in a tube except for an experimental
investigation by Takiya et al[7]. They clearly explained about the geometrical
effect of the orifice, the conical baffle and the nozzle on the shock attenuation.
In the present analysis, numerical computations were performed to analyze the
problem on shock speed and arrival time at specified locations by solving
compressible fluid equations. The results can be compared to the experimental
ones obtained by the above mentioned work to confirm the validity of the present
analysis.

2 Numerical computation
The basic equations are the unsteady 2D Euler equations written in a generalized
coordinate system,
F F
Q
+ 1 + 2 =0
t
Each vector element in Eq.(1) can be expressed by a matrix form as:

(1),

Shock wave attenuation

=
Q

1 u 1
,
J u 2
e

F1 =

U 1
1 u 1U 1 + x p

,
J u 2 U 1 + y p
(e + p )U

235

F 2 =

U 2
1 u 1U 2 + x p

J u 2 U 2 + y p
(e + p )U

(2),

Here, J is Jacobian, the density, p the pressure, e the total energy per unit
volume, u1 and u2 the velocities for the x and the y directions, U1 and U2 the
covariant velocities, x, y, x, y the metrics for a generalized coordinate system.
The spatial discretization for the inviscid flux is executed by the
Chackravarthy-Osher TVD scheme. The convective terms are discretized by the
flux difference splitting method by Roe, and a high-order accuracy term is
supplemented to a limiter function.
Simulations were performed for a two dimensional tube with 40mm height as
shown in Fig. 1. Three kinds of model obstacles with 8mm opening inlet were set
in the tube as shown in Fig. 1. They are referred to as (a) an orifice, (b) a
diverging nozzle, and (c) a conical baffle in the followings. The incident shock
Mach number is set to be M=1.25 just in front of the baffle-obstacles.

Fig.1 Three types of model configurations used in the 2D computations

In the case of axi-symmetrical computations, the following compensation term is

added to modify the vector term in the corresponding discrete equation as [11]

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d
qi , j = fi +1 2, j fi 1 2, j + fi ,j +1 2 fi , j 1 2 + dfi ,j
dt

(3),

and F
fi , j are the factors used for the vectors Q
respectively. The last term dfi , j , called in general, pressure compensation term,
Here, q i , j and

is necessary due to the difference in the circumference direction in the

axi-symmetrical coordinate.
The geometrical models used for the axi-symmetrical computation are shown as
Fig. 2. These configurations are the same geometry as the ones used in the
previous experiment [7]. The initial position as well as shock strength was given
at 50mm upstream from the baffle entrance. Furthermore, the pressure changes
with time were observed at 500mm downstream from the baffle entrance, in order
to evaluate the shock wave attenuation by the obstacles. Initial conditions for
incident shock waves are given in front of the obstacles. The incident shock Mach
number is taken as Ms=2.0, and the initial pressure and temperature are 13kPa
and 293K, respectively.

Fig.2

Three models of the baffle obstacles set in the axi-symmetrical tube

3 Transition phenomena of shock waves

Density contours during the shock wave front passing through the orifice at
various instances are shown in Fig. 3. These figures show sequential simulation
patterns of the instance of the shock front arrival at the orifice plate in Fig. 3(a),
and the beginning of shock expansion from the orifice due to the rapid increase of
the cross section in Fig. 3(b). One can observe that a part of the shock front
passes through the orifice to produce a refracted shock wave from the edge of the
orifice and the rest of the shock front is reflected from the orifice plate. In this
case the flow induced behind the transmitting shock front generates a free vortex
during the flow issuing from the orifice. The transmitting wave front further
expands towards the tube wall and reflects on the tube wall as shown Figs.3(c)
and 3(d). While the vortex in Fig.3 (b) continuously grows until it interacts with
the tube. The flow density close to the axis of symmetry behind the transmitting

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237

shock decreases suddenly due to shock expansion. The transmitting shock

propagates further downstream to expand until the wave front hits on the tube
wall, as in Fig. 3(d). The incidence angle of the transmitting shock front to the
wall is small enough at this stage that the reflection pattern of the shock is a
normal reflection. Thereafter two reflected shock fronts from both walls, i.e. the
upper and the down sides in this figure, approach to collide one another. During
this process, both shock fronts compress the fluid surrounded by the shocks and
the orifice plate and the density in this region, especially close to the center axis
of the tube, increases abruptly. At the same time, the vortices leave downstream
away from the orifice.

Fig.3

Sequential density contours during shock wave interaction with an orifice

Two shock fronts reflected from the upper and the lower sides of the tube in this
figure come to collide each other on the center axis of the tube. The density
being caught between the two reflected shock fronts may increase until the two
shocks collide each other as shown in Figs. 3(d) to 3(g).
A gas core in high pressure and density is formed between the reflected shock
front and the orifice plate in Fig. 3(d). The high enthalpy gas thus produced
behind the reflected shock front may flow out from the orifice into the flow
behind the shock as a jet. The jet interacts with the reflected shock front from the
tube wall to form complicated flow patterns as in Figs. 3(d) to 3(h). During the
interaction between the jet and the reflected shock front from the tube wall, the
high enthalpy core may further expand to the downstream along the tube axis.
The sequential density profiles during the interaction of a propagating shock
with the diverging nozzle are shown in Figs. 4(a) to 4(h). Figure 4(a) shows the
instance of the shock arrival at the entrance of the diverging nozzle. The high
density gas caused behind the reflected shock front from the nozzle follows the
transmitted shock front in Fig. 4(b). The transmitted shock is accelerated by the
jet in Figs. 4(c), (d), as in the orifice case. The shock front as well as the jet,

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however, cannot freely expand in the nozzle. The jet generates weak shocks that
interact with the nozzle wall behind the transmitted shock in Figs. 4(d) to 4(f).
Such the shocks construct the x-type shock in Fig. 4(f) and catch up with the
transmitted shock to interact each other in Fig. 4(g) and 4(h).

Fig.4

Sequential density contours during shock wave interaction with a

diverging nozzle

The upstream flow from the nozzle entrance generates a jet similar to the case of
the orifice flow as in Fig. 4(d). The jet may flow out towards downstream and
induces vortices close to the wall around the nozzle entrance. While the main jet
flow is accelerated along the nozzle axis and causes pseudo-shocks, so that the
flow density behind the shock waves in the tube wall slightly increases as in Figs.
4(e) and 4(f). The interaction of the transmitted shock front with the pseudo
shocks can be seen in Figs. 4(f) to 4(h).
In the case of both baffles of the orifice and the nozzle shown in Figs. 3 and 4,
the formation of high density region behind the reflected shock has an important
role to generate the strong jet that accelerate the transmitted shock front. From
these numerical simulations, one can expect that the strength of the transmitting
shock may attenuate by changing the configuration of the baffle, if the density at
the nozzle entrance can be decreased.
Figures 5(a) to 5(h) show sequential density contours behind transmitted shock
waves passing through the conical baffle. Figure 5(a) shows that the instance of
shock arrival at the inlet of the conical baffle. The incident shock front is cut by
the cone-edge. A part of the shock front transmits inside the cone and the rest of
the shock front propagates outside the cone. The high-density gas between the
cone and the tube behind the shock flows into the cone after the time elapse.
Although the gas outside the inlet of the cone and behind the reflected shock is
not so high in comparison to the orifice and the nozzle cases, it should turn
around the periphery of the cone to flow inside the cone. As a result, strong

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239

vortices are generated around the periphery of the inlet. The vortex thus
generated around the inlet seems to be more conspicuous than that in the case of
the orifice or the diverging nozzle. In this case, the effect of the jet flowing into
the cone may not be remarkable, since the pressure and the density to generate
the jet are not sufficiently high different from the case in the nozzle flow in Fig.
4. It means that the jet does not work significantly to accelerate the transmitted
shock wave. Although one observes x-type shock wave behind the transmitted
shock wave in Fig. 4(f), this kind of shock waves cannot be found in the cone. In
the outside of the cone, the incident shock front initially propagating
downstream may converge and then be reflected from the boundary between the
cone and the tube. When the reflected shock passes through the inlet region of
the cone, after reflecting from the blocked region between the cone and the tube,
the pressure behind the reflected shock close to the inlet increases again. Then a
part of the high-pressure gas expands to the inside of the cone. However, the jet
flowing into the cone is not so strong to generate the x-type shock. The vortex
generated around the inlet of the cone instead, is rather strong, since the flow
should rotate around the periphery at the inlet in Figs. 5(d) and 5(e).

Fig.5

Sequential density contours during shock wave interaction with a conical

baffle

4. Attenuation of shock waves

In the present computation three kinds of obstacles are discussed to decrease the
strength of incident shock waves. The most effective geometry to attenuate
propagating shock waves by an obstacle is to use a conical nozzle in a tube. The
flow condition in front of the inlet of the obstacles influences the shock
attenuation downstream in tubes. Especially the role of the jet generated close to
the inlet of the obstacles is significant. In the case of both an orifice and a

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diverging nozzle, the pressure behind the reflected shock wave becomes
relatively high due to the normal reflection of the incidence of shock wave in
front of the inlet of the obstacles. Such the high-pressure gas generates jet flow
behind the transmitted shock wave. In the case of the cone, the jet flow is also
generated behind the transmitted shock front. In this case, however, the pressure
to push the jet into the inside of the cone is not so high to create the x-type shock
in the obstacle, since the jet is pushed out by the high-pressure gas generated
behind incident shock front. As a result, the shock wave that transmits
downstream inside the cone cannot be effectively strengthened by the jet flow
that compresses the gas behind the transmitted shock. It should be noticed that a
part of the incident shock front propagates further downstream outside the cone
and does not contribute to pressurize the gas around the inlet of the obstacles.
While in the case of an orifice plate and a diverging nozzle, the pressure behind
the reflected shock front from either a plate or a normal wall that fixes a nozzle
is high enough to generate a jet flow.

Fig. 6 Shock wave interaction with various baffle obstacles in ax-symmetrical

tubes
In order to verify the process to generate a jet flow around the inlet of obstacles,
numerical computations were performed to the case of axi-symmetric flows.
Figure 6 shows the density profiles of flows for each model at the instance of

Shock wave attenuation

241

600s from the start, which is expected to be the time where the shock wave
might be fully developed to nearly become a normal shock wave after the
interaction with each obstacle. During the shock wave interaction with the
obstacles, the flow field shows complex pattern. After the transmitting shock
wave passes by the orifice or comes into either the nozzle or the cone, jet flow is
generated behind the transmitted shock. The secondary shock wave is also
generated in front of the jet. The strength as well as the shape of the secondary
shock wave are influenced by the jet strength and vary depending on the
obstacles. In the case of an orifice or a diverging nozzle, the x-type shock wave
is generated. While in the case of a conical baffle, the strength of the secondary
shock is very weak. The reason is that the pressure in front of the inlet of baffle
plates cannot be increased by means of normal reflection of shock waves, since
the shock front that is bifurcated by the edge of the cone may not contribute to
increase the pressure in front of the inlet of the cone. When the gas in front of
baffles flows downstream, the gas should turn around the aperture of the
obstacles to cause strong vortices. The most effective geometry to attenuate
incident shock waves seems to be the conical baffle.

Fig. 7 Calculated pressure profiles behind the transmitted shock wave monitored
at 500mm downstream from the baffles

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In order to estimate quantitatively the attenuation of the incident shock waves by

means of these obstacles, the pressure change with time is compared at the
distance of 500mm downstream from the baffle entrance in Fig.7 corresponding
to the flow phenomena in Fig.6. Figure 7 shows both the pressure distributions
over the tube wall and along the center line of the tube during a period of within
about 1ms after the shock wave passage. The pressure behind transmitted shock
waves, in general, decreases due to expansion of wave front, during flow
expansion from the baffle aperture. The change in pressure is larger along the
center line than over the wall of a tube.
In the case of the interaction of an orifice with shock wave, the sudden increase
in pressure is due to the shock wave arrival and after that the pressure fluctuates
around the averaged pressure of 1.2. The large decrease at the time of 2.4ms is
considered to having been caused by vortices behind the passing shock wave,
and the pressure reaches less than the base pressure in the tube, since the
expansion rate of the flow is higher and the vortex intensity is greater compared
to the other two cases. The reason why the no pressure decrease is observed just
behind the shock is the driving force of the transmitted shock wave provided
with the high pressure region, which is generated by the shock reflected from the
orifice plate.
In the case of a diverging nozzle, the sudden increase in pressure is due to the
shock arrival as in the case of the orifice and the pressure is slightly decreased
with time. This is because that the reflected shock wave moves from the tube
wall towards the center axis of the nozzle. After the transmitted shock wave is
passed away further downstream, the pressure profile fluctuates significantly
with time. The fluctuation may be caused by transverse motion of reflected
shock waves between the wall and the center axis in a tube. The pressure profile
along the center axis of the tube, however, is smaller than that of the case of the
orifice, in total. So, one can say that the incident shock wave can be more
effectively attenuated by using a diverging nozzle.
In the case of the conical baffle, the sudden increase in pressure caused by the
incident shock wave is rather small and after that decrease in pressure can be
observed as well. The shock strength is directly decreased by the expansion,
namely the enlargement of the cross-section, of shock front. In addition, the
effect of jet generated by high pressure behind reflected shock on the shock
attenuation is small in comparison with the flow in an orifice and a nozzle. The
pressure fluctuation with time is also very small. As a result, the attenuation of
the shock waves is executed most effectively from comprehensive viewpoint.

5. Conclusion
The 2-D computations for the ideal gases were performed to evaluate the effect
of obstacles on attenuation of incident shock waves in a tube. An orifice, a
diverging nozzle, and a conical baffle are considered as the obstacles. These
obstacles baffle the strength of transmitted shock wave. In the present
investigation the influence of various geometries of the obstacles on the

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243

attenuation of transmitted shock waves is discussed. As a result, one can

conclude as follows. The result may be applicable to design synchrotron
radiation beamlines.
The most effective configuration among three obstacles to attenuate incident
shock strength is a conical baffle. In the case of a conical baffle, the
high-pressure region in front of the inlet of the baffle is not created, since a part
of shock front propagates further outside of the baffle. It means that the pressure
increase behind reflected shock waves cannot be realized. The role of jet
formation appeared around the inlet region of the obstacles is important. In both
the case of an orifice and a diverging nozzle, the jet is clearly generated, when
the high-pressure gas behind reflected shock waves flows out from the inlet
region to the downstream.
In the case of an orifice and a diverging nozzle, the high-pressure region behind
reflected shock waves is realized between the reflected shock front and the baffle
plate of obstacles. The supersonic jet is created when the high-pressure gas flows
downstream. In the case of the orifice, the strength of transmitted shock waves is
not so diminished, since a supersonic jet compresses the flow behind transmitted
shock waves. Although the expansion rate of shock front is very large by the
sudden expansion of cross-sectional area, the transmitted shock front is
accelerated by supersonic jet.
In the case of a diverging nozzle, a supersonic jet is also generated and flows
downstream into the nozzle. However the effect of the jet on accelerating the
transmitted shock is not strong as in the case of orifices based on the pressure
increase behind reflected shock waves.

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Received: September, 2011