The implosion of cylindrical shell structures in a high-pressure water environment

The implosion of cylindrical shell structures in a high-pressure water environment is studied experimentally. The shell structures are made from thin-walled aluminium and brass tubes with circular cross sections and internal clearance-fit aluminium end caps. The structures are filled with air at atmospheric pressure. The implosions are created in a high-pressure tank with a nominal internal diameter of 1.77 m by raising the ambient water pressure slowly to a value, P_c, just above the elastic stability limit of each shell structure. The implosion events are photographed with a high-speed digital movie camera, and the pressure waves are measured simultaneously with an array of underwater blast sensors. For the models with larger values of length-to-diameter ratio, L/D₀, the tubes flatten during implosion with a two-lobe (mode 2) cross-sectional shape. In these cases, it is found that the pressure wave records scale primarily with P_c and the time scale [Formula: see text] (where R_i is the internal radius of the tube and ρ is the density of water), whereas the details of the structural design produce only secondary effects. In cases with smaller values of L/D₀, the models implode with higher-mode cross-sectional shapes. Pressure signals are compared for various mode-number implosions of models with the same available energy, P_cV , where V is the internal air-filled volume of the model. It is found that the pressure records scale well temporally with the time scale [Formula: see text], but that the shape and amplitudes of the pressure records are strongly affected by the mode number.