Single Stage Two Inch Light Gas Gun
The light gas gun at Marquette was manufactured by API and delivered in 2015. It has two barrels: a 15 foot, two inch smooth bore and a 13 foot, two inch slotted bore. The maximum working pressure is 10,000 psi which allows for a 200 g projectile to be launched up to 1,200 m/s. The target tank is generally configured for planar and inclined impact experiments.
Single Stage Half-Inch Light Gas Gun
The half-inch gun was built in 2008 time frame and has been shot hundreds of times over several campaigns in support of DTRA and AFOSR efforts. The half-inch gun is capable of launching a 15 g flight package to velocities as high as 300 m/s. It has a 6 ft long barrel and several catch-tanks and sabot stripper configurations. We have one tank which has visual accessibility which we would use during these proposed experiments to give us a better idea as to the behavior of the sabot and the final state velocity. In addition we have the capability to place a PDV probe looking directly down the barrel in order to assess the launch characteristics of the sabot. Thus we can measure the flight of the sabot down the entire length of the barrel starts from rest.
Velocimetry Measurements (PDV):Marquette has a four channel heterodyne Photon Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) system for use with either gun described above. The system is built around two 1551 nm NKT Photonics solid state continuous wave lasers. The target laser (Koheras Boostik) is capable of delivering light up to 2 W of power over a 0.1 nm adjustable range; the beat laser is also adjustable over the same range centered on 1551 nm. The data acquisition system is linear to 4 GHz bandwidth with an ultimate measurement bandwidth of 13 GHz. Thus in a homodyne configuration the system can resolve velocities up to 5,000 m/s with a temporal resolution of 50 ps. The 5000 m/s range can be shifted to higher velocities utilizing a heterodyne configuration.
High Speed Thermal Imagining: The Shock Physics lab has a long-wave TELOPS V500 high-speed thermal imaging camera.
Manganin Stress and Pressure Measurements: Marquette has a two channel Dynasen (CK 2-50/0.050-300) pulse power supply which is capable of making manganin strain gage measurements of stress. The response of the acquisition system is linear to 4 GHz bandwidth.
High-Speed Camera:
The shock lab has a Photron APS-RX camera which is capable of acquiring images at a frame rate of up to 1 million frames per second (FPS). The resolution is dependent upon the frame rate; at acquisition rates below 3000 FPS the resolution is 1000
1000 pixels per image with exposure times of 1/500,000 s. As the frame rate is increased the resolution decreases linearly up to 1 million FPS where the resolution is one pixel.
Pulse ReceiverComputational ResourcesThinkmate
The lab also has access to a wide variety of University Equipment not specific to the shock physics lab. These include material characterizations and material examination, such as SEM, x-ray diffraction, x-ray computed tomography (XCT), light microscopy and Scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, engineering has a fully equiped machine shop which includes, traditional and CNC mills and lathes, rapid prototyping and 3D printing capabilities.
