Numerical Studies on Propagation Mechanisms of Gaseous Detonations in the Inhomogeneous Medium

Abstract

Numerical simulation of propagation mechanisms of gaseous detonations in the inhomogeneous medium is studied by using the reactive Euler equations coupled with a two-step chemical reaction model. The inhomogeneity is generated by placing artificial temperature perturbations with different wavelengths and amplitudes. The motivation is to investigate the effect of artificial perturbations on the evolution or amplification of cellular instability. The results show that, without artificial perturbations, a planar ZND detonation can evolve into a fully-developed cellular detonation after a distance because of the amplification of the cellular instability. With the artificial perturbations evolved in, at the early stage, the artificial perturbations control the transverse wave spacing by suppressing the amplification of the cellular instability. However, after a steady-state, the cellular instability starts to amplify itself again and eventually transits to a fully-developed cellular detonation. It is demonstrated that the presence of the artificial perturbations delays the formation of the cellular detonation, and the increase of instability factor can slow down this delay. It is also found that, if the wavelength of the artificial perturbations is close to the transverse wave spacing of the cellular detonation in the homogeneous medium, synchronization of these two factors occurs, and hence a cellular detonation with extremely regular cell pattern is immediately formed. The temperature discontinuity causes the front to be more turbulent with the presence of weak triple-wave structure locally besides the natural transverse waves. The artificial perturbations can increase the intrinsic instability, and hence changes the propagation mechanism of the detonation front. In contrast, large artificial perturbations could prohibit the propagation but reduce cellular instability. It is concluded that the competition of artificial perturbations with intrinsic detonation instability dominates the evolution of cellular structures of the detonation front.