Experimentally modified unsteady shock wave model for wave rotor design

Unsteady shock waves are vital to the compression in a wave rotor, and it is a main part of wave rotor design to predict the unsteady shock waves. The classical analytic model is capable of such prediction for ideal inviscid flow, but additional losses in the real viscous flow cause the properties of shock waves to diverge from that prediction. The analytic model was modified to correct such divergence via correlation coefficients, and was calibrated via experiment. The experiments were conducted in a single-channel experimental rig where unsteady shock waves could be tested with uniform incoming flow. Three similarity principles were investigated in the experiment. They determined the correlation coefficients in the modified model. The modified model would be applied to wave rotor design provided that the similarity principles of the wave rotor channel match those in the experiments.