Steady Planar Propagation of the Gasless SHS Reaction Producing Titanium Carbide

Abstract

The investigation reported here concerns with an attempt to generalize the existing observations of the propagating gasless SHS process. A Damkohler number is realized to embody such main factors affecting the steady propagation speed as the thermal properties, stoichiometry of the reaction, carbon particle size, compression effect and the reactant diffusion. The governing equations in their nondimensional form are solved numerically to obtain steady propagation speeds and preheat lengths. These computed speeds and lengths are examined in the light of the existing knowledge of laminar flame propagation in gaseous reactant systems to discover a useful analogy.

Key Words:

• Combustion synthesis
• SHS
• gasless combustion
• titanium carbide
• propagation of reaction front