Pulsating detonation front

Abstract

The hydrodynamic theory of detonation phenomena proposed elsewhere could not explain new experimental facts, including the phenomenon of the collapse of chemical reactions. This paper considers in detail how the collapse phenomenon governs the fundamental features of the detonation front structure. The phenomenon of chemical reaction collapse is defined, the parameters which lead to the origination of instability and structure of the inhomogenities are determined, what occurs after the collapse in a diverging overcompressed detonation is examined, the structure of a strongly unstable detonation front, passage from the unstable to the stable detonation front, unstable detonation front in a mixture of nitromethane and acetone, and gas detonation are all also described in detail. The reasoning developed in this paper about the structure of a pulsating detonation front is valid not only for Arrhenius kinetics of HE decomposition, but is applicable to any decomposition mechanism, such as chain reactions.