Editing Detonation (section)

{{Short description |Explosion at supersonic velocity}}
{{For|detonation in spark-ignition engines|Engine knocking}}
{{Distinguish|Denotation}}
[[File:TNT detonation on Kaho'olawe Island during Operation Sailor Hat, shot Bravo, 1965.jpg |thumb |300px |Detonation of [[TNT]], and [[shock wave]]]]

'''Detonation''' ({{etymology|la|{{Wikt-lang|la|detonare}}|to thunder down/forth}})<ref>{{cite web
     |url=         https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/detonate
     |archive-url=         https://web.archive.org/web/20190222042210/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/detonate
     |url-status=         dead
     |archive-date=         February 22, 2019
     |title=       detonate
     |author=      Oxford Living Dictionaries
     |author-link= Oxford Living Dictionaries
     |work=        British & World English
     |publisher=   Oxford University Press
     |access-date= 21 February 2019
    }}</ref> is a type of [[combustion]] involving a [[supersonic]] exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a [[shock front]] propagating directly in front of it. Detonations propagate supersonically through [[shock wave]]s with speeds about 1&nbsp;km/sec and differ from [[deflagration]]s which have subsonic flame speeds about 1 m/sec.<ref>{{cite book |title=Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering |date=2016 |publisher=Society of Fire Protection Engineers |page=390 |edition=5 |url=https://www.sfpe.org/standards-guides/sfpehandbook }}</ref> Detonation may form from an [[explosion]] of fuel-oxidizer mixture. Compared with deflagration, detonation doesn't need to have an external oxidizer. Oxidizers and fuel mix when deflagration occurs. Detonation is more destructive than deflagrations. In detonation, the flame front travels through the air-fuel faster than sound; while in deflagration, the flame front travels through the air-fuel slower than sound.

Detonations occur in both conventional solid and liquid explosives,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fickett |first1=Wildon |last2=Davis |first2=William C. |title=Detonation |publisher=University of California Press |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-486-41456-0 }}</ref> as well as in reactive gases. TNT, dynamite, and C4 are examples of high power explosives that detonate. The [[detonation velocity|velocity of detonation]] in solid and liquid explosives is much higher than that in gaseous ones, which allows the wave system to be observed with greater detail (higher [[Image resolution|resolution]]).

A very wide variety of fuels may occur as gases (e.g. [[hydrogen]]), droplet fogs, or dust suspensions. In addition to dioxygen, oxidants can include halogen compounds, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and [[Nitrogen oxide|oxides of nitrogen]]. Gaseous detonations are often associated with a mixture of fuel and oxidant in a composition somewhat below conventional flammability ratios. They happen most often in confined systems, but they sometimes occur in large vapor clouds. Other materials, such as [[acetylene]], [[ozone]], and [[hydrogen peroxide]], are detonable in the absence of an oxidant (or reductant). In these cases the energy released results from the rearrangement of the molecular constituents of the material.<ref>{{cite book |last=Stull |first=Daniel Richard |title=Fundamentals of fire and explosion |publisher=[[American Institute of Chemical Engineers]] |series=Monograph Series |volume=10 |page=73 |year=1977 |isbn=978-0-816903-91-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zcBTAAAAMAAJ }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Bretherick's Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards |publisher=Butterworths |location=London |year=2006 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780123725639 |isbn=978-0-123725-63-9 |first1=Peter |last1=Urben |first2=Leslie |last2=Bretherick |edition=7th }}</ref>

Detonation was discovered in 1881 by four French scientists [[Marcellin Berthelot]] and [[Paul Marie Eugène Vieille]]<ref>Berthelot, Marcellin; and Vieille, Paul Marie Eugène; « Sur la vitesse de propagation des phénomènes explosifs dans les gaz » ["On the velocity of propagation of explosive processes in gases"], Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences, vol. 93, pp. 18–22, 1881</ref> and [[Ernest-François Mallard]] and [[Henry Louis Le Chatelier]].<ref>Mallard, Ernest-François; and Le Chatelier, Henry Louis; « Sur les vitesses de propagation de l’inflammation dans les mélanges gazeux explosifs » ["On the propagation velocity of burning in gaseous explosive mixtures"], Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences, vol. 93, pp. 145–148, 1881</ref> The mathematical predictions of propagation were carried out first by [[David Chapman (chemist)|David Chapman]] in 1899<ref>Chapman, David Leonard (1899). "VI. On the rate of explosion in gases", ''The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science'', '''47'''(284), 90-104.</ref> and by [[Émile Jouguet]] in 1905,<ref name="Jouguet1905" /> 1906 and 1917.<ref>Jouguet, Jacques Charles Émile (1917). ''L'Œuvre scientifique de Pierre Duhem'', Doin.</ref> The next advance in understanding detonation was made by [[John von Neumann]]<ref name="vonNeumann" /> and [[Werner Döring]]<ref name="Döring" /> in the early 1940s and [[Yakov B. Zel'dovich]] and [[Aleksandr Solomonovich Kompaneets]] in the 1960s.<ref name="Zel'dovichKompaneets" />