Accurate measurements of time-varying pressure are important to many industrial sectors. The most stringent requirements for accurate high-frequency pressure measurements come from the automotive, aerospace and ballistics industries, where pressure with frequencies up to few hundred kHz must be accurately measured. To provide dynamic calibrations of pressure meters in the required frequency range and therefore enable accurate measurements in the most demanding industries, many national metrology institutes worldwide are developing a primary dynamic measurement standard for pressure based on the shock tube. In the shock tube, the calibrated pressure meter can be excited by an almost ideal pressure step change generated by the reflection of the shock wave from the end wall of the shock tube. Such an extremely rapid reflection of the shock wave, in addition to generating the high-frequency pressure, inevitably also excites unwanted mechanical vibrations, which can produce spurious output signals of the pressure meter being calibrated.

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