Radulescu Gasdynamics Laboratory

Just came back from a week trip to Taiwan, where I was invited by Professor Shouyin (Ian) Yang of the National Formosa University and Professor Ming-Hsun Wu of the National Cheng Kung University. with Shouyin (Ian) Yang and Ming-Hsun Wu at NCKU Had and amazing time, gave two talks.  The first at NCKU on Detonation dynamics and stability: Insights from Fickett’s toy model . and the second as a keynote lecture at the 29th National Conference on Combustion and Energy, Taiwan:   A detonation paradox: The influence of turbulent diffusive processes in controlling the burning rate in detonations. Lab tours at NCKU: and and took in some of the architecture in Tainan. Thanks again to Ian and Ming-Hsun for this wonderful opportunity.

Our recent paper was just published in Combustion and Flame .  The idea is simple.  At the molecular collision level, chemical reactions liberating energy give rise to energetic particles. These highly energetic particles may trigger other reactions locally, before their translational kinetic energy can be equilibrated with the bulk.  Such hotspots have been theorized nearly 60 years ago by Prigogine and co-workers.  Our molecular dynamic simulations confirm that large modifications to the reaction rate can be anticipated for highly exothermic reactions.