A study of detonation diffraction and failure for a model of compressible two-phase reactive flow

Abstract

A two-phase model of heterogeneous explosives, with a reaction rate that is proportional to the gas-phase pressure excess above an ignition threshold, is examined computationally. The numerical approach, a variant of Godunov's method designed to accommodate nonconservative terms in the hyperbolic model, extends previous work of the authors to two-dimensional configurations. The focus is on the behavior of an established detonation as it rounds a 90° corner and undergoes diffraction. The dependence of the post-diffraction conduct on the reaction rate is explored by varying the reaction-rate prefactor and the ignition threshold. The aim is to determine whether the model, as postulated, can capture dead zones, which are pockets of unreacted or partially reacted explosive observed in the vicinity of the corner in diffraction experiments. Results of this study are compared with those of a similar investigation on the one-phase ignition-and-growth model.