TABLE OF CONTENTS A particularly severe form of explosion occurs when an explosive substance detonates. Detonation can occur in liquid and solid explosives, in explosive gas mixtures and in vapour clouds. These aspects of detonation are considered in Sections 17.3, 17.6 and 17.28.
Accounts of detonation, and of shock waves, are given in Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves (Courant and Friederichs, 1948), Theory of Detonation (Zeldovich and Kompaneets, 1960), Shock Waves in Chemistry and Physics (G.N. Bradley, 1962), Gas Dynamics of Combustion (Shchelk in and Troshin, 1965), Shock Waves and Detonations in Gases (Soloukhin, 1966), Fundamentals of Combustion (Strehlow, 1968a), Detonation (Fickett and Davis, 1979), Unconfined Vapour Cloud Explosions (Gugan, 1979), The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Glasstone and Dolan, 1980), Explosive Shocks in Air (Kinney and Graham, 1985), Principles of Combustion (Kuo, 1986), Combustion, Flames and Explosions of Gases (B. Lewis and von Elbe, 1987) and Gaseous Detonations (Nettleton, 1987).
The origins of work on detonations are to be found in explosion disasters, notably in coal mines, and in the mathematical theory of shock waves. Studies by Riemann showed that even starting from smooth initial conditions the movement of compressible gases can lead to formation of discontinuities with a sudden rise in pressure and temperature. The thermodynamics of shock waves were investigated by Hugoniot (1887 89). The extension to reactive systems then led to the detonation theory of Chapman (1899) and of Jouguet (1905).
The Chapman Jouguet (CJ) equations, however,...
