How Can You Create and Control a Shockwave Using Electricity?

[Fabchester]

How do u reproduce an maintain a shockwave without the use of explosives.
Having an unlimited supply of electricity ie. straight from a reactor.
Controlling the distance the wave travels ie. 100m

 

[Danger]

Oh, man... I just saw an awesome unit on Daily Planet a few days ago. It's somewhere in Europe (maybe Germany) and is being used to test a new type of re-entry vehicle that is composed of sharp edges and angles rather than the usual rounded type. It irritates me immensely that I can't remember the details. Basically, it consists of an air cannon a couple of hundred metres long, built in two stages. The entire first section recoils something like 20 cm when it fires. The first stage is a "booster" that skips a gap and sets up a secondary shock in the second stage. It hits the model at something over Mach 5, but lasts only a couple of milliseconds.
I'll see if I can find more information about it.

 

[mugaliens]

I'll see if I can find more information about it.

Please! I'm most interested.

In the meantime, we used to use the electricity to compress gas in large tanks over time, then release the gas over a short duration through a Mach 2+ tube for shock wave analysis.

 

[Danger]

Aww, crap! I just spent a couple of hours trying to find it, without success. Will try again in the next few days.