Phenomenology of Hydrogenous Mixture Explosions

Keywords Combustion Laminar flame Turbulent flame 

Before presenting the characteristic parameters and recommending methods of their assessment, it is worth providing additional information on recent large-scale investigations of blast parameters for hydrogen + air mixtures. 

---

The explosion limit phenomenology observed in hydrogen-oxygen mixtures has been semi-quantitatively described in section 2.1.2. For an initial pressure below approximately one atmosphere there exists one threshold temperature for explosion, typically between 700 and 900 K, whose magnitude is determined by the appropriate isothermal branched chain kinetics. More specifically, this boundary, separating regimes of slow, quasi-steady state and explosively rapid reaction, is defined by an equality between the rates of chain centre formation by branching steps and destruction by termination steps. 

---