Abstract:The initiation, steady propagation and failure mechanism of gaseous detonation wave in periodic inhomogeneous media are very complex, and many physical mechanisms are still unclear, which is an active topic in detonation physics. Numerical simulation of propagation of gaseous detonations in the inhomogeneous medium is studied by using the reactive Euler equations coupled with a two-step chemical reaction model. The inhomogeneity is generated by placing artificial temperature perturbations with different wavelengths and amplitudes. The influence of temperature disturbance with different wavelength and amplitude on the structure of wave front is analyzed. The results show that, the transition of ZND detonation to cellular detonation under artificial temperature disturbance is mainly controlled by two competitive factors: one is the intrinsic instability of detonation wave, the other is the wavelength and amplitude of artificial disturbance, the former is the internal factor, the latter is the external factor. The existence of artificial temperature disturbance delays the evolution of ZND detonation to cellular detonation by suppressing the development of shear wave, and the increase of internal instability can slow down this delay phenomenon. This shows that the artificial temperature disturbance can restrain the development of cell instability in a certain range, but it cannot stop the process. The discontinuity of temperature makes the detonation wave front more distorted, which leads to the existence of a weak triple-wave structure near the shear wave, which is, the artificial disturbance increases the inherent instability of detonation wave and changes the propagation mechanism of detonation wave front. The propagation of detonation and the instability of detonation are restrained by the artificial temperature disturbance with large amplitude. The formation of detonation front cellular structure depends on the artificial temperature disturbance and its own instability.