Schlieren and shadowgraph techniques are used around the world for imaging and measuring phenomena in transparent media. These optical methods originated long ago in parallel with telescopes and microscopes, and although it might seem that little new could be expected of them on the timescale of 15 years, in fact several important things have happened that are reviewed here. The digital revolution has had a transformative effect, replacing clumsy photographic film methods with excellent—though expensive—high-speed video cameras, making digital correlation and processing of shadow and schlieren images routine, and providing an entirely-new synthetic schlieren technique that has attracted a lot of attention: background-oriented schlieren or BOS. Several aspects of modern schlieren and shadowgraphy depend upon laptop-scale computer processing of images using an imagecapable language such as MATLABTM. BOS, shock-wave tracking, schlieren velocimetry, synthetic streak-schlieren, and straightforward quantitative density measurements in 2D flows are all recent developments empowered by this digital and computational capability.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6501/aa5748/pdf

A review of recent developments in schlieren and shadowgraph techniques

Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities: A journey through scales

Diffuse interface model for high speed cavitating underwater systems

Experimental and numerical investigation on a multi-layer protective structure under the synergistic effect of blast and fragment loadings

Vulnerability assessment of chemical facilities to intentional attacks based on Bayesian Network

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02012164/document

Experimental study of hydraulic ram effects on a liquid storage tank: Analysis of overpressure and cavitation induced by a high-speed projectile

Ballistic impact on an industrial tank: study and modeling of consequences.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the possibility of an intentional act targeting the chemical process industry has become realistic. It is, therefore, a great concern to be able to predict the immediate consequences of such an act. This study is intended to improve our knowledge about the sequence of events that occurs when a high-speed bullet (>1000 m s−1) penetrates a vessel filled with toxic liquid. We find that, prior to liquid ejection, several well-defined phases occur, including the phenomenon known as the “hydraulic ram.” This paper focuses on projectile–target interactions and explains how the decay of projectile velocity is related to the initial conditions of the target.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02012173/document

Preliminary study of ballistic impact on an industrial tank: Projectile velocity decay

After the detonation of an oxygen-deficient homogeneous high explosive, a phase of turbulent combustion, called afterburning, takes place at the interface between the rich detonation products and air. Its modelling is instrumental for the accurate prediction of the performance of these explosives. Because of the high temperature of detonation products, the chemical reactions are mixing-driven. Modelling afterburning thus relies on the precise description of the mixing process inside fireballs. This work presents a joint numerical and experimental study of a non-reacting reduced-scale set-up, which uses the compressed balloon analogy and does not involve the detonation of a high explosive. The set-up produces a flow similar to the one caused by a spherical detonation and allows focusing on the mixing process. The numerical work is composed of 2D and 3D LES simulations of the set-up. It is shown that grid independence can be reached by imposing perturbations at the edge of the fireball. The results compare well with the existing literature and give new insights on the mixing process inside fireballs. In particular, they highlight the fact that the mixing layer development follows an energetic scaling law but remains sensitive to the density ratio between the detonation products and air.

/pdf/analysis-of-mixing-in-high-explosive-fireballs-using-small-66oks9dugz.pdf

Analysis of mixing in high-explosive fireballs using small-scale pressurised spheres

Droplets atomization by shockwave can act as a consequence in domino effects on an industrial facility: aggression of a storage tank (projectile from previous event, for example) can cause leakage of hazardous material (toxic and flammable). As the accident goes on, a secondary event can cause blast generation, impacting the droplets and resulting in their atomization. Therefore, exchange surface increase impacts the evaporation rate. This can be an issue in case of dispersion of such a cloud. The experiments conducted in the lab generate a shockwave with an open-ended shock tube to break up liquid droplets. As the expected shockwave speed is about 400  m/s (∼Mach  1.2), the interaction with falling drops is very short. High-speed imaging is performed at about 20,000 fps. The shockwave is measured using both overpressure sensors: particle image velocimetry and pure in line shadowgraphy. The size of fragmented droplets is optically measured by direct shadowgraphy simultaneously in different directions. In these experiments, secondary breakups of a droplet into an important number of smaller droplets from the shockwave-induced flow are shown. The results of the optical characterizations are discussed in terms of shape, velocity, and size.

/pdf/high-speed-imaging-optical-techniques-for-shockwave-and-4geethxxu6.pdf

Nicolas Lecysyn

Papers

Experimental study of hydraulic ram effects on a liquid storage tank: Analysis of overpressure and cavitation induced by a high-speed projectile

Ballistic impact on an industrial tank: study and modeling of consequences.

Preliminary study of ballistic impact on an industrial tank: Projectile velocity decay

Analysis of mixing in high-explosive fireballs using small-scale pressurised spheres

High-speed imaging optical techniques for shockwave and droplets atomization analysis