Interaction of a planar reacting shock wave with an isotropic turbulent vorticity field.

Abstract

Linear interaction analysis (LIA) is employed to investigate the interaction of reactive and nonreactive shock waves with isotropic vortical turbulence. The analysis is carried out, through Laplace-transform technique, accounting for long-time effects of vortical disturbances on the burnt-gas flow in the fast-reaction limit, where the reaction-region thickness is significantly small in comparison with the most representative turbulent length scales. Results provided by the opposite slow-reaction limit are also recollected. The reactive case is here restricted to situations where the overdriven detonation front does not exhibit self-induced oscillations nor inherent instabilities. The interaction of the planar detonation with a monochromatic pattern of perturbations is addressed first, and then a Fourier superposition for three-dimensional isotropic turbulent fields is employed to provide integral formulas for the amplification of the kinetic energy, enstrophy, and anisotropy downstream. Transitory evolution is also provided for single-frequency disturbances. In addition, further effects associatedtothe reaction rate, which have not been included in LIA, are studied through direct numerical simulations. The numerical computations, based on WENO-BO4-type scheme, provide spatial profiles of the turbulent structures downstream for four different conditions that include nonreacting shock waves, unstable reacting shock (sufficiently high activation energy), and stable reacting shocks for different detonation thicknesses. Effects of the propagation Mach number, chemical heat release, and burn rate are analyzed.