Diagnostic Experiments on Converging Detonations

Photographic observations of the formation of a cylindrical detonation wave from the “patching up” of a number of planar detonation wavelets are reported. It is shown that “Mach type” reflections are responsible for the smoothing out of the curvature of the original polygonal wave front. There is evidence that stable cylindrical convergence is achieved on the basis that large-scale vorticity in the flow field behind the reflected shock wave after collapse is absent, and an extremely high temperature lasting for a few microseconds is detected. Spectroscopic studies show that a temperature of 1.89 × 105 °K is obtained when the imploding wave reflects from the center of symmetry.