Study on the Mechanism of the Deflagration to Detonation Transition Process of Explosive

In this paper we presented a numerical study of the mechanisms of the deflagration to detonation transition (DDT) process of explosives to assess its thermal stability. We treated the modeling system as a mixture of solid explosives and gaseous reaction products. We utilized a one-dimensional two-phase flow modeling approach with space-time conservation element and solution element (CE/SE) method. Simulation results show a plug area of high density with relatively slow chemical reactions, whose forward boundary is the fast running shock wave, and rearward boundary is the burning wave.We identified a criterion of steady detonation through a detailed analysis of the characteristics of the reaction process: steady detonation occurs at locations where different physical quantities, such as pressure, density, temperature and velocity, reach peak values simultaneously.We also simulated the high temperature DDT tube experiments of HMX-based high explosive. We found good agreement between the simulation results of detonation velocity and run length determined by the above criterion and the experimental results.