Experimental and numerical study of flame acceleration and DDT in a channel with continuous obstacles

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Flame acceleration and deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) in obstructed channels is an important subject of research for propulsion and explosion safety. Experiment and numerical simulation of DDT in a stoichiometric hydrogen–oxygen mixture in a channel equipped with continuous triangular obstacles were conducted in this work. In the experiment, high-speed schlieren photography was used to record the evolution of reaction front and strong pressure waves. A pressure transducer was used to record the pressure build-up. In the numerical simulation, a high-order numerical method was used to solve the fully compressible reactive Navier–Stokes equations coupled with a calibrated chemical-diffusive model. The calculations are in good agreement with experimental observations. The result shows that the triangular obstacles can significantly promote flame acceleration and provide conditions for the occurrence of DDT. In the early stages of flame acceleration, the main cause for flame roll-up and distortion is the effect of vortices generated in the gaps between neighbouring triangular obstacles. The scales and velocities of vortices are determined by the positive feedback process between combustion-generated flow and flame propagation. The continuous triangular obstacles create an intricate flow field and increase the complexity of shock reflections. This complicated flow leads to local detonation initiation through different mechanisms, i.e. flame-flame collisions and flame-shock interactions. Successive local detonation ignitions and failures are produced in the obstacle gaps due to the continuous layout of the triangular obstacles. It was found that successive local detonation ignitions are critical for the eventual success of DDT formation because the shock waves generated by them continually strengthen the leading shock. The detonation failure or survival due to diffraction depends on the height of the narrow space (h*) between the bulk flame and obstacle vertex, and can be quantitatively characterised by the ratio of the space height to detonation cell size (), h*/.