On mixing of the products of detonation of composite explosives in the chemical reaction region

The problem of mixing of the products of detonation of composite explosives is of principal importance for the synthesis of ultrafine diamond from composite mixtures and also for chemistry of detonation processes as a whole. An analysis of mixing in the chemical reaction region due to molecular diffusion shows that this mechanism may be important only for grain sizes of several micrometers. If the grain sizes reach tens or hundreds of micrometers, only partial mixing on the grain boundaries is possible. Investigations of the hydrodynamic mechanism of mixing shows that it may occur owing to a nonuniform velocity field behind the detonation wave front in the mixture and to the development of turbulence and cumulative processes during pore implosion. In mixtures with grain sizes of the order of 30 μm, these processes can lead to appreciable mixing during the time of ≈0.5 μs and longer. Theoretical estimates are compared with the results of experiments performed at the Lavrentyev Institute of Hydrodynamics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Altai Scientific and Industrial Enterprise (Biisk) for studying the synthesis of ultrafine diamond with the use of the isotope method.