A. Pumir et Vv. Barelko, Propagation and ignition of fast gasless detonation waves of phase or chemical transformation in condensed matter, EUR PHY J B, 16(1), 2000, pp. 137-145
Fast self sustained waves of chemical or phase transformations, observed in
several contexts in condensed matter effectively result in "gasless detona
tion". The phenomenon is modelled by coupling the reaction diffusion equati
on, describing chemical or phase transformations, and the wave equation, de
scribing elastic perturbations. The coupling considered in this work involv
es (i) a dependence of the sound velocity on the chemical (phase) field, an
d (ii) the destruction of the initial chemical equilibrium when the strain
exceeds a critical value (strain induced phase transition). Both the case o
f an initially unstable state (first order kinetics) and metastable state (
second order kinetics) are considered. An exhaustive analytic and numerical
study of travelling waves reveals the existence of supersonic modes of tra
nsformations. The practically important problem of ignition of fast waves b
y mechanical perturbation is investigated. With the present model, the crit
ical strain necessary to ignite gasless detonation by local perturbations i
s determined.