ABSTRACT
A nonuniformly preconditioned reactive mixture may burn in one of at least three different modes: a nearly uniform thermal explosion, a detonation, or a deflagration. When a detonation is the end result, the transient events leading up to it may involve either the deceleration of a supersonic reaction wave or the combined acceleration of a subsonic reaction wave and a precursor wave of compression. Concentrating on detonation evolution, this paper examines the case of an initially constant temperature gradient and attempts to classify, via an asymptotic analysis, the mode of passage to detonation vis-it-vis the size of the initial temperature gradient.
