Marianne Omang is from Oslo and she did both her Cand. Scient thesis and PhD at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, at the University of Oslo.
- Where have you worked and in what field?
- In my Cand. Scient thesis I worked in the field of helioseismology. In helioseismology we study solar oscillations caused by waves propagating in the interior of the sun. We used data from both Kitt Peak National Solar Observatory and Harestua Solar Observatory.
After finishing my Cand. Scient thesis, I started working for the Norwegian Defence Estates Agency (NDEA) in their Research and Development section. A few years later I started on my PhD, which was financed by NDEA as a part-time project.
- What are you trying to find out?
- I am working with shock and blast waves, both numerically and experimentally. For the numerical work I use our in-House code Regularized Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics methods (RSPH), which was developed partly during my PhD. Since then, the code has been further developed to include a multi-phase description. This means that we can study two phases, for instance gas and solid particles, in the same simulations.
Our current project is to study spontaneous shock ignition of reactive aluminium particles. This is done both numerically and experimentally. The experimental studies are performed in our Laboratory in Horten, Norway. Here, we use a shock tube specially designed to handle pressure up to 200 MPa. Optical arrangements such as Schlieren and Shadow photography are used to study the shock development in further details.
The experimental work is quite challenging, but we are quite satisfied to see that we have succeeded in generating the shock strength necessary to study the ignition of the particles. The next step is to study the effect of including aluminium particles in high explosives. Some results from this work are included in the figure above.
- How do you plan to solve the main question?
- Now that we have achieved some experimental results, the work on improving the combustion model remains. The empirical models found in the literature are all based on small sets of experimental data, so obtaining our own data set will help to improve the model.
- How can you describe your experience at ITA?
- ITA always had a good study environment. I also enjoy working here, even if my position is only 20%.