Making Shock Waves Pay: The Commercial Aspects of Shock Waves

Abstract

The field of shock waves is a matured branch of science and engineering with sound scientific foundation. However commercial exploitation of the knowledge on shock waves is almost negligible, and in a way shock waves are solutions looking for the problems. In this presentation, we provide glimpses of our efforts to mitigate this lacuna with examples of our recently launched commercial products. These efforts include the hand-operated tabletop shock tube, named Reddy tube, hand-operated tabletop hypersonic shock tunnel, and modified artificial insemination gun called SuperBull. The first two products are essentially developed as teaching tools for graduate and undergraduate level courses. In addition, the tabletop shock tube has proved its utility as a tool for calibration of pressure sensors and also as a source of blast waves to study traumatic brain injury. A brief account of our efforts to take the shock waves to market place is presented here which could inspire other shock wave researchers to follow the suit.