The canonical problem of the one-dimensional, pulsating, overdriven detonation wave has been studied for over thirty years, not only for its phenomenological relation to the evolution of multidimensional detonation instabilities, but for its providing a robust reactive, high speed flowfield with which to test numerical schemes. The present study examines this flowfield using high order, essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) schemes, systematically varying the level of resolution of the reaction zone, the size and retention of information in the computational domain, the order of the scheme, and initial conditions. It is found that there can be profound differences in peak pressures as well as in period of oscillation, not only for cases in which the reaction front is under-resolved, but for cases in which the computation is corrupted due to a too-small computational domain. Methods for estimating the required size of the computational domain to avoid erroneous solutions are described.

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1999-2000 Reactive Flow and Transport Phenomena