Performance of a shock tube facility for impact response of structures

•Performance of a shock tube facility for structural response investigation.•Novel performance indicator accounting for the pressure losses.•Numerical approach based on several finite element models of increasing complexity.•Reflected shock wave efficiency of about 50–60% with respect to ideal condition.

This paper presents a numerical approach to compute the performance of a double diaphragm shock tube facility for structural response investigations. To assess the influence of different sources of dissipation, including partial diaphragm opening and shock tube vibration, numerical simulations are carried out using several different finite element models of increasing complexity to compute shock tube performance. The numerical model accounting for tearing and partial opening of the diaphragms is the one that best reproduces the results of the experiment, thus indicating that the diaphragm non-ideal opening process is the most relevant cause of losses. Both the numerical and the experimental results agree in predicting shock tube efficiency in terms of intensity of the reflected shock of about 50–60% with respect to ideal, one-dimensional conditions.