A compact impulse pressure generator based on shock acceleration exciter

Impact pressure generators based on the drop weight system can be reliably used as a secondary dynamic pressure standard for calibrating a dynamic pressure sensor against a reference one. Even some research has been conducted to develop it as a primary standard. However, to achieve high impulse pressure effectively among the controllable variables of the system, it is necessary to increase the drop height to obtain high impact speed. Because of this limitation in the size of the system, new impact methods must be developed. For instance, using piston-cylinder with a diameter of 8 mm in order to generate a peak pressure of 100 MPa with a duration of less than 3 ms, approximately 1 kg of mass should be dropped from approximately 1.5 m above. In this paper, a compact and space - efficient impulse pressure generator based on a shock accelerometer is proposed. The shock acceleration exciter is known as being used for an impact standard that generally consists of pneumatic exciter, air-borne hammer and anvil. For the purpose of generating an impulse pressure effectively, the airborne anvil was removed and 1 MPa pneumatic-driven exciter was designed to accelerate 1 kg air-borne hammer. Using other components of the drop-weight system, a new compact impulse pressure generator based on the shock acceleration exciter has been developed. The peak impulse pressure could be controlled according to the pressure applied to the pneumatic driven exciter and the distance between hammer and piston head. In this paper, preliminary experimental results of the new impulse pressure generator are presented.