Reinitiation Mode Study of a Regular Planar Detonation

On the role of transverse detonation waves in the re-establishment of attenuated detonations in methane-oxygen

“…to reproduce various constant-volume and one-dimensional combustion characteristics for methane-oxygen mixtures [18,19,20]. While reduced elementary reactions mechanisms have been successfully applied at micro-scale resolutions to study transverse detonations in methane-oxygen mixtures [16], for example using only 13 species and 35 reactions, the 4-step model was adopted instead owing to its much lower overhead.…”

“…We attribute this success to the adoption of the thermally perfect four-step combustion model, which was calibrated to reproduce the the correct ignition delays at different temperatures and pressures when compared to the GRI-3.0 mechanism [22]. It is worth noting that while past numerical simulations have been successful in capturing transverse detonation waves in critical diameter problems involving hydrogen [35,36] and highly irregular near-limit detonation propagation in methane-oxygen [16], such simulations have generally needed to use detailed elementary combustion mechanisms. Exceptions to this are highly irregular critical detonation propagation [37] and critical detonation diffraction [38] where the transverse detonations were in fact observed using one-step models.…”

“…It is a feature that was not explicitly discussed in Bhattacharjee's thesis due to a lack of available resolution in the experimental schlieren photographs [5]. This feature, however, has been captured numerically before using skeletal detailed elementary reaction mechanisms for Mach stem detonation re-initiation in critical detonation propagation of stoichiometric methane-oxygen [16] and detonation initiation arising from a double Mach shock reflection in propane-oxygen [50]. In all resolutions, a shock reflection or local explosion drove local pressure waves outward.…”

“…In more recent work, which also adopted a one-step combustion modeling approach, Maxwell et al [9] found that adequate closure of the turbulent combustion resulted in improved prediction of the re-initiation of a detonation, but also did not predict any transverse detonation features. Recent simulations of highly irregular detonation propagation [16], however, have shown that the application of a reduced detailed elementary reaction mechanism can indeed reproduce the various re-initiation regimes as observed experimentally. It is clear from all of this past work that in order to capture the complete set of features observed during the critical re-establishment of a detonation wave, a sufficiently detailed description of the chemical reactions is required.…”