Experimental Determination of the Static Equivalent Pressures of Detonative Explosions of Stoichiometric H2/O2/N2-Mixtures in Long and Short Pipes

As continuation of recently published experimental work [1,2], the static equivalent pressures (“pstat“) of the different detonative pressure scenarios occurring in stoichiometric H2/O2/N2 mixtures were determined in long and short pipes at ambient initial temperatures (20 °C) and initial pressures ranging from 4 bar abs to 35 bar abs. The pipes used for the tests were about 10 m long and had radial dimensions of 48.3×2.6 and 114.3×3.6 (outer diameter [mm] × wall thickness [mm]). The O2 content was varied from about 10 vol.-% to the highest value possible in stoichiometric mixtures (33.3 vol.-%). For the tests in the long pipes the focus was on the variation of the ratio between the static equivalent pressure at the point where transition from deflagration to detonation occurred and the static equivalent pressure in the region of the stable detonation (pstat_DDT_long / pstat_stable). The ratio attained a maximum of about 5 at 14.78 vol.-% O2 (stoichiometric H2/air) and decays to 1 when increasing the O2 content to 24 vol.-%. This drop indicates that with increasing O2 content ever less precompression is required to cause auto ignition in the precompressed gas directly ahead of the deflagrative flame front. For mixtures of H2 with N2-diluted air the ratio exhibits a slight decrease which is in contrast to what would be expected and is not yet understood. The results obtained for the ratio between pstat of scenarios 3 and 4 (stable detonation and reflected stable detonation) and the Chapman-Jouguet pressure of the investigated gas mixtures confirmed the findings presented in PVP2013-97677 for ethylene/air-mixtures. For mixtures of H2 and slightly diluted air the load for the reflected instable detonation was found to be about 7 · pstat_stable, the load at the DDT in the short pipe is 6.6 · pstat_stable and the load for coalescence of DDT and reflection is about 14 · pstat_stable.