Explosion unified theory

J.K. Dienes, A unified theory of flow, hot spots, and fragmentation with an application to explosive sensitivity, in High-Pressure Shock Compression of Solids II Dynamic Fracture and Fragmentation, L. Davison, D. Grady, and M. Shahinpoor Eds. Springer, New York, 1996. 

B.F. Gray and C.H. Yang, Unified Theory of Explosions, Cool Flames, and Two-Stage Ignitions, Trans. Faraday Soc. 65 (1969) 1614. 

Accounting simultaneously for detailed mechanisms and for thermal phenomena constitutes the unified theory of explosions. 

Researchers still have wide differences in explaining fundamental operative mechanisms responsible for the rock fracturing by explosive energy despite its prevalent use at global scale and enormous experimental efforts made in the last half century. It can be seen from Table 1 that various theories are propounded in order to explain the failure mechanisms and there is no existence of a unified theory. The differences stem from... 

Explosion Limits Determination from a Unified Thermal and Chain Theory, In the paper of... 

Gray fit Yang (Ref 1), a mathematical model was proposed to unity the chain and thermal mechanisms of explosion. It was shown that the trajectories in the phase plane of the coupled energy and radical concentration equations of an explosive system will oive the time-dependent behavior of the system when the initial temperature and radical concentration are given. In the 2nd paper of the same investigators (Ref 2), a general equation for explosion limits (P—T relation) is derived from a unified thermal and chain theory and from chis equation, the criteria of explosion limits for either the pure chain or pure thermal theory can be deduced. For detailed discussion see Refs... 

While Gray Yang are not denying the usefulness of such ideas, they consider that too literal an application on the distinction can lead to difficulties. For this reason they tried to unify both theories and this problem is discussed in their paper. They also examined the effect of fuel consumption on thermal explosions, definition of critical conditions and the effects of vessel shapes. Finally, the relationship between thermal explosion criteria and flame theoty described by Belles (Ref 2), as well as detonability limits were pointed out. Comments on the paper of Gray Yang of Profs R.R. Baldwin R. Ben-Aim are given on p 1061 of Ref 3 Refs 1) N.N. Semenov, "Chemical Kinetics... 

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