Attenuation of Guided, Repeated Shock Waves in Gases

Abstract

The attenuation of guided, “plane,” progressive, repeated shock waves has been measured in circular tubes of radius ranging from 0.96–5.4 cm at several frequencies and intensities for air and five other gases. Analysis of the data leads to the conclusions: (a) the wall attenuation of a guided sawtooth wave corresponds to that of a single shock and shows no dependence on frequency; (b) correcting for wall loss by subtracting the experimental wall‐attenuation term from the total attenuation does not eliminate the fundamental disagreement between the theoretical predictions for infinite sawtooth waves and the experimental values for guided sawtooth waves. The disagreement is apparently due to the gross discrepancy between the fluid‐dynamic relations that are assumed by the theorists and the experimental situation. An empirical law is presented for the attenuation of guided, repeated shock waves in air.