Experiments on spinning detonations with detailed analysis of the shock structure

Spinning detonations are characteristic of detonation limit phenomena in round tubes. In this work we study experimentally the structure of the transverse wave of single-headed spinning detonations. The flow field is experimentally analysed and an original approach enables us to calculate the overall shock structure. The calculations and experimental results indicate that the actual structure of the spinning detonation tries to match closely to the condition where the state parameters (pressure and temperature) reach their maximum values. This condition corresponds to a spinning head where the Mach stem is normal to the incoming flow and could be readily used as boundary condition by further investigators to determine the structure of spinning detonations.