A Molecular Dynamics Study of Relaxation Processes at a Detonation Wave Front

Abstract
Energy relaxation processes at a detonation wave front are studied with use of the molecular dynamics method. The model system is a hard disk system which undergoes an exothermic isomerization reaction \(A+S{\rightleftarrows}B+S+\varDelta Q\), where Δ Q is a reaction heat. Computations are performed for several values of the molar fraction of each species. Almost all the chemical energy of A particles is released when the detonation wave front passes. It is found that this relaxation process is composed of two kinds of time regions; one is a rapid decay process caused by non-correlated reactive collisions and the other a slow relaxation by the thermodynamic relaxation and/or the cage effect of particles.