Spontaneous Transition of Turbulent Flames to Detonations in Unconfined Media

Abstract

Deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) can occur in environments ranging from experimental and industrial systems to astrophysical thermonuclear (type Ia) supernovae explosions. Substantial progress has been made in explaining the nature of DDT in confined systems with walls, internal obstacles, or pre-existing shocks. It remains unclear, however, whether DDT can occur in unconfined media. Here we use direct numerical simulations (DNS) to show that for high enough turbulent intensities unconfined, subsonic, premixed, turbulent flames are inherently unstable to DDT. The associated mechanism, based on the nonsteady evolution of flames faster than the Chapman-Jouguet deflagrations, is qualitatively different from the traditionally suggested spontaneous reaction wave model, and thus does not require the formation of distributed flames. Critical turbulent flame speeds, predicted by this mechanism for the onset of DDT, are in agreement with DNS results.

4 pages, 3 figures; accepted to Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (4)

• Athena: A New Code for Astrophysical MHD
• An Unsplit Godunov Method for Ideal MHD via Constrained Transport in Three Dimensions
• The Interaction of High-Speed Turbulence with Flames: Global Properties and Internal Flame Structure
• The Interaction of High-Speed Turbulence with Flames: Turbulent Flame Speed

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