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by numpad0 394 days ago
I must admit that I'm in fact not a native English speaker and my sentence construction is still jarring at times... sorry for that.

That distinction was not intentional, but IIUC, chemical reactions propagating faster than the speed of sound(of surrounding material, not necessarily of air(which idk how is it even defined, ductile limit or something(of air!?))) has effect of consolidating what would normally be multiple consecutive waves of density changes following one another, into a single shockwave with higher peak pressure, and higher peak pressure in an engine is generally thought to lead to higher exhaust gas velocities and better efficiencies so long that the engine holds. I think this is what some comments mentioning P-V diagrams and Carnot efficiency is meaning to say, except mine is in uneducated terms.