Investigation of Shock Dynamics Inside a Miniature Tube for Targeted Drug Delivery Applications

A shock tube is a laboratory device used to explore the flow behaviour of shock waves. This research focuses on the computational study of fluid dynamics within a shock tube aimed at targeted drug delivery, specifically examining the behaviour of shock waves. Using ANSYS Fluent, the study employs a density-based implicit solver to perform transient analyses with two different gas combinations: nitrogen-air and helium-air. Key findings reveal that helium-air exhibits more significant pressure and temperature ratios, as well as higher Mach numbers, than nitrogen-air under various operating pressures. These computational results, which show good agreement with analytical calculations and experimental data, indicate that the helium-air model achieves higher microjet velocities (106 m/s) compared to the nitrogen-air model (62 m/s). This suggests that the helium-air combination is more effective in achieving high reflected pressure at minimum operating pressure within short time intervals.