Numerical simulation of the shock reflection and interaction in a shock tube

The process of shock reflection and shock interaction with the boundary layer and the contact surface in a two-dimensional shock tube is numerically simulated by solving the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations for compressible fluid flow. The solution is obtained by the ICE method proposed by Harlow and Amsden (1971) for solving time-dependent problems in multidimensional fluid dynamics. In spite of being limited to the case of very low Reynolds numbers, the simulation yields useful information that is difficult to obtain experimentally.