Regimes of chemical reaction waves initiated by nonuniform initial conditions for detailed chemical reaction models

Regimes of chemical reaction wave propagation initiated by initial temperature nonuniformity in gaseous mixtures, whose chemistry is governed by chain-branching kinetics, are studied using a multispecies transport model and a detailed chemical model. Possible regimes of reaction wave propagation are identified for stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen and hydrogen-air mixtures in a wide range of initial pressures and temperature levels, depending on the initial non-uniformity steepness. The limits of the regimes of reaction wave propagation depend upon the values of the spontaneous wave speed and the characteristic velocities of the problem. It is shown that one-step kinetics cannot reproduce either quantitative neither qualitative features of the ignition process in real gaseous mixtures because the difference between the induction time and the time when the exothermic reaction begins significantly affects the ignition, evolution, and coupling of the spontaneous reaction wave and the pressure wave, especially at lower temperatures. We show that all the regimes initiated by the temperature gradient occur for much shallower temperature gradients than predicted by a one-step model. The difference is very large for lower initial pressures and for slowly reacting mixtures. In this way the paper provides an answer to questions, important in practice, about the ignition energy, its distribution, and the scale of the initial nonuniformity required for ignition in one or another regime of combustion wave propagation.