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Dust explosions pose a serious hazard in many industries. The detonability and flam inability of dust/oxidizer mixtures depend on the ignition delay of the dust particles when suddenly exposed to a high temperature environment. Consequently, the ignition delay time of dust particles behind a shock wave in the Mach number range of 4.0-5.0 has been measured using a photomultiplier tube to determine the onset of ignition. The dusts investigated included Pittsburgh Seam Coal, graphite, diamond, oats, and RDX. The experimental arrangement, consisting of a shock tube and two different dust injection devices, is described in detail, and experimental results for dusts ranging in particle size from 2 to 74 /*m are presented. In the Mach number range considered, ignition delay times varied from 2 to 100 /*s. A detailed analytical model based on a solution of the heat conduction equations for the particle interior coupled with a solution of the particle equation of motion has been developed. Heterogeneous reactions occurring on the particle surface and in the pores within the particle are used to model the chemistry. The results were in reasonable agreement with most of the data. Approximate analyses based on a comparison of characteristic thermal and chemical times were also developed. A key conclusion is that the ignition delay is determined mainly by the heat-up time of the particle surface.

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Abstract. When a plane detonation propagating through an explosive comes into contact with a bounding explosive, different types of diffraction patterns, which may result in the transmission of a detonation into the bounding mixture, are observed. The nature of these diffraction patterns and the mode of detonation transmission depend on the properties of the primary and bounding explosives. An experimental and analytical study of such diffractions, which are fundamental to many explosive applications, has been conducted in a two channel shock tube, using H2-O2 mixtures of diffi~rent equivalence ratios as the primary and bounding or secondary explosive. The combination of mixtures was varied from rich primary / lean secondary to lean primary / rich secondary since the nature of the diffraction was found to depend on whether the Chapman-Jouguet velocity of the primary mixture, Dp, was greater than or less than that of the secondary mixture, Ds. Schlieren framing photographs of the different diffraction patterns were obtained and used to measure shock and oblique detonation wave angles and velocities for the different diffraction patterns, and these were compared with the results of a steady-state shock-polar solution of the diffraction problem. Two basic types of diffraction and modes of detonation reinitiation were observed. When Dp > Ds, an oblique shock connecting the primary detonation to an oblique detonation in the secondary mixture was observed. With ])p < Ds, two modes of reinitiation were observed. In some cases, ignition occurs behind the Mach reflection of the :shock wave, which is transmitted into the secondary mixture when the primary detonation first comes into contact with it, from the walls of the shock tube. In ether cases, a del:onation is initiated in the secondary mixture when the reflected shock crosses the contact surface behind the incident detonation. These observed modes of Mach stem and contact surface ignition have also been observed in numerical simulations of layered detonation interactions, as has the combined oblique-shock oblique-detonation configuration when Dp > Ds. When Dp > Ds, the primary wave acts like a wedge moving into the secondary mixture with velocity Dp after steady state has been reached, a configuration which also arises in oblique-detonation ramjets and hypervelocity drivers.Correspondence to: Ix[. Tonello

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