Optical Shock Wave Imaging for Aviation Security

This paper is about shock wave propagation inside an aircraft fuselage, caused either by a terrorist device or by an accidental explosion. The concern over blasts inside airframes, stemming from past terrorist attacks on commercial aviation using concealed explosives, continues unabated and extends to luggage, passengers, and air cargo. In earlier publications by the present authors, it was noted that all previous aviation security studies lacked optical shock imaging, the principal tool of explosion and shock wave research. In an effort to correct this, high-speed schlieren shock wave cinematography methods on a large scale are demonstrated here for aircraft hardening studies. This capability is used to examine shock propagation in realistic aircraft interior scenarios, as well as to carry out some basic experiments toward an improved understanding of internal blast wave behavior.