The Contribution of A. K. Oppenheim to Explaining the Nature of the Initiation of Gaseous Detonation in Tubes

This paper analyzes A.K. Oppenheim’s original works on the transition of deflagration to detonation and reviews them from the perspective of new numerical and experimental results recently obtained on such phenomena. Particular attention is focused on processes happening in the boundary layer of the tube walls ahead of the accelerating flame. The results of the theoretical analyses of temperature variations inside developing boundary layer are presented and compared to the temperature variation in a free stream away from the boundary layer. Analyses of temperature increase in such layers clearly indicate that the self-ignition of the mixture happens in the boundary layer ahead of the propagating flame front. New experimental results obtained recently by a research group from the A. V. Luikov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute in Minsk, Belarus, combined with previously conducted theoretical analyses and numerical simulations, show clearly and unambiguously that the origin of the “explosion in the explosion”, postulated by A. K. Oppenheim in 1966, is always responsible for the Deflagration-Detonation Transition (DDT) in gases and is located in the boundary layer ahead of the accelerating flame front.