Citation

Courtney MW, Courtney AC. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 2010; 81(12): 126103.

Affiliation

U.S. Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Drive, USAF Academy, Colorado, 80840-6210, USAForce Protection Industries, Inc., 9801 Highway 78, Ladson, South Carolina 29456, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Institute of Physics)

DOI

10.1063/1.3518970

PMID

21198058

Abstract

The prevalence of blast-induced traumatic brain injury in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has motivated laboratory scale experiments on biomedical effects of blast waves and studies of blast wave transmission properties of various materials in hopes of improving armor design to mitigate these injuries. This paper describes the design and performance of a table-top shock tube that is more convenient and widely accessible than traditional compression driven and blast driven shock tubes. The design is simple: it is an explosive driven shock tube employing a rifle primer that explodes when impacted by the firing pin. The firearm barrel acts as the shock tube, and the shock wave emerges from the muzzle. The small size of this shock tube can facilitate localized application of a blast wave to a subject, tissue, or material under test.

Language: en