Both deflagration and detonation are explosions. Gun powder and most IC engines deflagrate for instance. It's just the speed of the pressure wave. If it is subsonic it's deflagration, supersonic is detonation.
You seem to fail to understand that your talking about physical laws with some solidly set limits. If you've actually manged to detonate flour. That is created a supersonic pressure wave in a cloud of unrefined particulate carbohydrates then you should probably publish a paper on it. There are several physical laws that stretches close to the breaking point.
Just because they operate on the same principle it doesn't mean they have the same potential. That's like saying if you made a 14th century bombard big enough it could be as powerful as a modern howitzer.
The fundamental mechanics of dust explosions says other wise. A dust fire does not become an explosion if it's not contained in someway so the pressure wave can propagate. Without a significant pressure wave a primary explosion can't ignite the richer fuel mixtures of secondary explosions. So primary and secondary fuel mixtures have to be separated.
You can see how it works in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYjqr1xjxy0
Why would i? It´s hard to get it right but most "home-pyrotechnic" know how it works even if few bother to try and make it happen.
It´s funny how you now admit that they work the same but you still try to claim that what one can do the other cannot.
That´s merely an issue of "big enough". If you think that it´s completely impossible to get the same effect with oldstyle artillery or whatever then you´re so completely stuck in your little box of conviction that its just silly.
Of course you wont get things like precisionmade prefrag or gps guidance or whatever, but the explosive effect, that is just a matter of size of shell. You will probably need about 5 times as big to get a similar effect but of course it´s not impossble. That claim is just laughably ignorant.
Shows how much you know. If i didn´t know how dangerous it is to play with i would suggest you try it out yourself, but since you´re so convinced about how it wont explode outside of a container, instead i´ll just tell you to stay the hell away from real dust explosions, you would probably just get yourself killed.
Responsible ones know it doesn't work. If your so intent on reading why don't you study the difference between a deflagration and a detonation. Particularly when a deflagration does and does not qualify as an explosion. Also you could actually learn enough about explosive theory to realize how rare detonations are in gaseous mediums.
Saying they work on the same principles is not the same thing as saying they work exactly the same way. I understand the similarities and the differences. Your presenting a modern weaponized FAE and claiming a flour dust explosion can mimic it's effects just by increasing the fuel available and dispersing it corectly. You seem to understand nothing about the limiting factors on dust explosions. How they compare to vapor explosions. For instance while there is such a thing as an unconfined vapor explosion there is no such thing as an unconfined dust explosion. All you get when you ignite dust clouds in an unconfined space is a flash fire. A big burst of noise and light easily confused with an explosion, dangerous as any fire can be, but not an explosion.
Your not the only one who has played with powder explosions before. I've built some flour bombs as well as sawdust bombs and a few other things in my misspent youth. The difference seems to be that I actually knew I was creating impressive and comparably dangerous special effects not weapons.
I have read up on this stuff. Both as a safety officer at a coal fired plant and some fluid dynamics books. I don't have the textbooks on hand but I do have these nice pdf's I found with a few minutes research.(My bolds)
Couldna find it last night.