GASEOUS DETONATIONS - A SELECTIVE REVIEW

This review confines itself to available information on gaseous detonations, including those in aerosols, clouds of flammable dusts and hybrid mixtures, from the standpoint of safety of chemical processing plant. In so doing, it examines recent extensions to work based on the concept of an ideal front with losses (non-ideal theory), showing how this may be applied to derive guidelines on the effects of tube diameter, of wall roughness and of initial pressure of the mixture on the velocity of a steady front. Further extension to the prediction of limits is considered for conditions likely to be experienced in actual plant, where walls are unlikely to be smooth and the presence of inert particles in the explosive medium is a possibility. However, the shortcomings of such an approach in dealing with the interactions of a real front with a complex component of plant is recognised. The experimental techniques which have been used to reveal the complex nature of real fronts are reviewed, prior to a description of studies of the structure of fronts which propagate transversely across the leading front and on how this structure is influenced by the properties of the explosive medium. Finally, experimental work on both non-reactive shocks and detonations in changing configurations of confinement is examined, in terms of possible measures for both reducing the destructive potential of a detonation and obtaining reliable design criteria for chemical plant.