Mechanisms of Initiation of Detonation in Explosive Vapor Clouds.

摘要

During this period emphasis has been placed mostly on problems pertaining to feasibility of FAE III weapons. In particular major efforts have been devoted to the study of the mechanisms of initiation using various techniques other than the blast initiation method via concentrated explosive charges of conventional FAE weapons. Perhaps the most significant progress is the discovery of the universal initiation mechanism of Shock Wave Amplification by Coherent Energy Release (SWACER). When conditions for the SWACER mechanism to work have been generated locally in the explosive gas, then initially weak shocks can amplify extremely rapidly to form detonations in a time scale of the order of microseconds and corresponding length scales of the order of centimeters for the sub-atmospheric fuel-oxygen mixtures studied. It has been demonstrated experimentally that flash photolysis, intense turbulent mixing of either a pyrophoric compound (DMZ) or hot combustion products with the explosive gas can lead to direct initiation via the SWACER mechanism. Theoretical modelling of the SWACER mechanism is being performed to achieve the necessary criteria for scaling up the present laboratory scale experiments to field tests and to the use of fuel-air mixtures rather than the more detonable fuel-oxygen mixtures of the present work. (Author)