Stability of detonation waves propagating in plane and rectangular channels

Stability of detonation waves (DWs) propagating in a plane or rectangular channel with respect to two-dimensional and three-dimensional disturbances is considered. Accepting a simple hypothesis that the most unstable mode of the linear theory continues to dominate even in the nonlinear regime, one can derive a number of fairly definite predictions of the developed DW structure from the linear stability theory. In particular, the theory predicts the number of detonation cells formed in a channel of a specified size and the cell size, the minimum size of the channel in which the multifront DW structure can still exist, and the parameters at which the number of cells changes in a jump-like manner. All these predictions are qualitatively consistent with available experimental data and numerical results.