Law of Speeds

Careful study of the rate of propagation of flame in the combustion of complex gaseous mixtures has led to the enunciation of the following law:

Given two or more mixtures of air or oxygen with different individual combustible gases, in each of which mixtures the speed of propagation of flame is the same, all combinations of the mixtures of the same type propagate flame at the same speeds under the same conditions of experiment.

From this it follows that a mixture of a number of different combustible gases with air, for example, may be regarded as the algebraic sum of mixtures of each individual combustible gas with air, the proportions of the two being such that the flame speed in it, if the mixture were burning alone, would be the same as in the complex mixture.