We report here on initial studies of a pulsed hydromagnetic plasma gun that can operate in either pre-filled or gas-puff mode demand. These modes enable agile and responsive performance through tunable thrust specific impulse. Operation with molecular nitrogen propellant is demonstrated to show the thruster candidate technology for air-harvesting drag compensation very low Earth orbit. A dual o...

We present results from a systematic study of the effects of initial parameters on three-dimensional thermonuclear supernova models. One major challenge to numerical models of thermonuclear supernova explosions is to reproduce the diversity observed among Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). With the rapid advancement of three-dimensional models over the past years, systematic studies have become possi...

Dust layers on the bottom of mine tunnels, on fac toy floors, or on the floors of gruin elevator passages are the most frequent cause of highly destructive dust explosions. Typically, such layered dust explosions involve a high velocity, acceleruting, turbulent flame which is fed by the dust layer and results in high clestructivt' static and dynamic pressures. In some cases transition to detona...

This paper presents the modeling of low-concentration hydrogen deflagrations performed with the recently developed KYLCOM model. Three experiments carried out in THAI facility (performed in the frames of international OECD THAI experimental program) were selected for the simulation exercise. The tests allow studying lean mixture hydrogen combustion at normal ambient, elevated temperature and su...

Natural gas, composed mainly of methane, is in some ways similar to propane gas. Both fuels have similar energy densities per unit mass, and similar laminar premixed flame burning velocities. However, propane explosions have been shown to produce higher overpressures in unconfined explosion tests when compared to methane. In vapor cloud explosion modeling, methane is considered to be a “low” re...

We present a new way of modeling turbulent thermonuclear deflagration fronts in white dwarfs undergoing a Type Ia supernova explosion. Our approach is based on a level set method which treats the front as a mathematical discontinuity and allows full coupling between the front geometry and the flow field (Smiljanovski et al. 1997). Two different implementations are described and their physically...

The propagation of cellularly stabilized thermonuclear flames is investigated by means of numerical simulations. In Type Ia supernova explosions the corresponding burning regime establishes at scales below the Gibson length. The cellular flame stabilization—which is a result of an interplay between the LandauDarrieus instability and a nonlinear stabilization mechanism—is studied for the case of...

New high order implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta methods have been developed and implemented into a finite volume code to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for reacting gas mixtures. The resulting nonlinear systems in each stage are solved by Newton’s method. If only the chemistry is treated implicitly, the linear systems in each Newton iteration are simple and solved directly. If in addition certa...