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The techniques described in this paper were developed during a study of high velocity liquid/solid impact. This form of impact is relevant to a number of technological problems such as the rain erosion of aircraft, the erosion of steam turbine blades, cavitation damage and the cleaning, cutting or fragmentation of materials using high velocity liquid jets. There are advantages in creating two-dimensional impact geometries since these enable processes occurring inside the impacted liquid mass and the onset of jetting to be studied in detail. Liquid wedge and drop geometries are produced by first casting water/gelatine sheets and then cutting out the required shapes. The impacting solid is a plate fired from a rectangular bore gas gun. The impact is viewed at high magnification using high speed photography at microsecond framing rates with an Imacon camera, and the shocks are visulised using Schlieren photography. The results give information on the shock structures produced, the "water hammer" and "edge" pressures and the critical conditions for jetting. The two-dimensional techniques have also been applied to studies of cavity collapse. In this case, a single cavity, or an array of cavities, is formed in the gelatine layer. An advantage of the technique is that the cavity size and spacing can be accurately controlled. It is well known that when a shock passes over a cavity, a jet is formed in the direction of the shock, by involution of the cavity surface. The impact of this jet onto a solid surface is an important feature of cavitation damage. In our experiments, we have also studied shocks passing over an array of cavities. Cavity collapse is also important as an ignition mechanism with explosives and as a source of "hot-spots" which aid the build-up to, and propagation of, fast reaction in explosives. However, there is still controversy about the relative importance of adiabatic heating of the gas in the cavity and shock heating when the jet impacts the far side of the cavity. We have investigated this problem by photographing the collapse of two-dimensional cavities containing small quantities of primary explosives.
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