The Effect of Momentum Loss on Detonation Failure at Very Low Activation Energy

Abstract

In this paper, the behavior of detonation waves in a non-ideal environment has been studied. Modeling of detonation has been performed based on one-dimensional Euler equations (momentum conservation) by considering friction as the momentum loss source term in the equation with a single-step Arrhenius law as the chemical kinetics model. Piecewise parabolic method(PPM) has been used to simulate the flow and solve the Euler equations. The shock front conservative tracking algorithm was used to have the finer mesh (Adaptive mesh refinement AMR) at the wave front location. The non-ideal environment is an environment in which external factors, such as friction, cause the detonation behavior to deviate from the ideal behavior. Therefore, the innovation of the present work is modeling detonation in these non-ideal conditions for mixtures with very low activation energy to detect its failure mechanism. The effect of momentum loss on the detonation behavior has been parametrically studied at very low activation energy (in which the detonation behavior is completely regular, here, 8). Depending on the level of mixture activation energy, the detonation has its failure mechanism. It is concluded that the failure mechanisms of the detonation in this study are the mechanisms of pressure drop and chemical reaction rate reduction. The un-burnt packet mechanism is not involved in it. The detonation wave, regardless of the amount of mixture activation energy, fails anyway as the momentum loss exceeds a critical limit.