Head-on collision of a detonation with a planar shock wave

Abstract

It has been established that all self-sustained detonations possess a multi-dimensional cellular structure resulting from the interaction of an ensemble of transverse shock waves. However, the various physical mechanisms of gas ignition and self-sustenance of the detonation structure still remain unclear. This is due primarily to the complexity of the problem, where unsteady shock-shock and shock-vortex interactions are strongly coupled with the chemical kinetics. In an effort to understand this complex structure, previous investigations have been focused on the study of detonation wave response to strong perturbations such as sudden area change, obstacles, density or concentration gradients, porous or acoustic absorbing walls, etc. However, these perturbation studies resulted in a multi-dimensional phenomena are too complex to permit the problem to be modeled.