Characteristics Of Large Diffusion Flames Burning In A Vitiated Atmosphere

Experiments concerning properties of large diffusion flames burning steadily in a vitiated atmosphere under conditions similar to those which may arise in a room fire are described. The effects of vitiation on the products of combustion and flame lengths, and the extinction limits are described for natural gas and ethylene diffusion flames stabilized on 8.9-, 19- and 50-cm pool-type burners. As vitiation was increased and the flame extinction limit was approached, the flame length increased slightly. Close to the limit, radiation from soot in the flame became imperceptible, leaving only a weakly luminous blue flame. Even with significant reductions in both the flame height and luminosity near the limit conditions, the hydrocarbon fuels were completely oxidized in the flame to water and carbon dioxide and no measurable concentrations of products of incomplete combustion were produced. A. comparison of limiting oxygen concentrations and limiting flame temperatures for these experiments with the results of other investigations shows reasonably good agreement despite widely varying experimental techniques. These results are contrasted with those obtained in the unsteady situation which arises when a large buoyant diffusion flame burns in an enclosed space such that the upper part of the flame is in a strongly vitiated layer composed of a mixture of air and products of combustion, and the lower part in fresh air

Theory of laminar flames in stagnation flows

Laminar flame propagation equations in stagnation flow using flat flame diffusion burne

Soot formation and radiation in turbulent jet diffusion flames under normal and reduced gravity conditions

Most practical combustion processes, as well as fires and explosions, exhibit some characteristics of turbulent diffusion flames. For hydrocarbon fuels, the presence of soot particles significantly increases the level of radiative heat transfer from flames. In some cases, flame radiation can reach up to 75 percent of the heat release by combustion. Laminar diffusion flame results show that radiation becomes stronger under reduced gravity conditions. Therefore, detailed soot formation and radiation must be included in the flame structure analysis. A study of sooting turbulent diffusion flames under reduced-gravity conditions will not only provide necessary information for such practical issues as spacecraft fire safety, but also develop better understanding of fundamentals for diffusion combustion. In this paper, a summary of the work to date and of future plans is reported

Effects of heat release on triple flames

Heat release effects on laminar flame propagation in partially premixed flows are studied. Data for analysis are obtained from direct numerical simulations of a laminar mixing layer with a uniformly approaching velocity field. The structure that evolves under such conditions is a triple flame, which consists of two premixed wings and a trailing diffusion flame. Heat release increases the flame speed over that of the corresponding planar premixed flame. In agreement with previous analytical work, reductions in the mixture fraction gradient also increase the flame speed. The effects of heat release and mixture fraction gradients on flame speed are not independent, however; heat release modifies the effective mixture fraction gradient in front of the flame. For very small mixture fraction gradients, scaling laws that determine the flame speed in terms of the density change are presented. © 1995 American Institute of Physics

The Coherent Flame Model for Turbulent Chemical Reactions

A description of the turbulent diffusion flame is proposed in which the flame structure is composed of a distribution of laminar diffusion flame elements, whose thickness is small in comparison with the large eddies. These elements retain their identity during the flame development; they are strained in their own plane by the gas motion, a process that not only extends their surface area, but also establishes the rate at which a flame element consumes the reactants. Where this flame stretching process has produced a high flame surface density, the flame area per unit volume, adjacent flame elements may consume the intervening reactant, thereby annihilating both flame segments. This is the flame shortening mechanism which, in balance with the flame stretching process, establishes the local level of the flame density. The consumption rate of reactant is then given simply by the product of the local flame density and the reactang consumption rate per unit area of flame surface. The proposed description permits a rather complete separation of the turbulent flow structure, on one hand, and the flame structure, on the other, and in this manner permits the treatment of reactions with complex chemistry with a minimum of added labor. The structure of the strained laminar diffusion flame may be determined by analysis, numerical computation, and by experiment without significant change to the model

On the dynamics of the collapse of a diffusion-flame hole

The collapse dynamics of a diffusion-flame hole in the presence of a counterflow are studied. We construct unsteady solutions of the one-dimensional edge-flame model of Buckmaster (1996), in which heat and mass transverse losses are algebraic. The flame structure is determined in the classical limit of large activation energy. Solutions for both planar and axisymmetric strain geometry are considered for the particular case of unity Lewis number. It is shown that the final stage of the edge-flame collapse is determined by a dominant balance between the time rate of change of the mass fractions (and temperature) and diffusion, giving a self-similar structure in which the size of the edge-flame hole approaches zero, to leading (zeroth) order, as a 1/2-power of time. This solution suggests an expansion of the full model equations in 1/2-powers of time that allows detailed analysis of the effects of side losses and flow distribution in the edge-flame collapse process. It is found that side loss effects are apparent at the first order, whereas convection by the counterflow is first felt during collapse at the second order in the fractional-time expansion. Numerical integrations of the governing equations are found to verify the analytic results

Regularization modeling for large-eddy simulation of diffusion flames

We analyze the evolution of a diffusion flame in a turbulent mixing layer using large-eddy simulation. The large-eddy simulation includes Leray regularization of the convective transport and approximate inverse filtering to represent the chemical source terms. The Leray model is compared to the more conventional dynamic mixed model. The location of the flame-center is defined by the 'stoichiometric' interface. Geometrical properties such as its surface-area and wrinkling are characterized using an accurate numerical level-set quadrature method. This allows to quantify flame-properties as well as turbulence modulation effects due to coupling between combustion and turbulent transport. We determine the active flame-region that is responsible for the main part of the chemical conversion in the flame and compare direct and large-eddy simulation predictions

Analysis of opposed jet hydrogen-air counter flow diffusion flame

A computational simulation of the opposed-jet diffusion flame is performed to study its structure and extinction limits. The present analysis concentrates on the nitrogen-diluted hydrogen-air diffusion flame, which provides the basic information for many vehicle designs such as the aerospace plane for which hydrogen is a candidate as the fuel. The computer program uses the time-marching technique to solve the energy and species equations coupled with the momentum equation solved by the collocation method. The procedure is implemented in two stages. In the first stage, a one-step forward overal chemical reaction is chosen with the gas phase chemical reaction rate determined by comparison with experimental data. In the second stage, a complete chemical reaction mechanism is introduced with detailed thermodynamic and transport property calculations. Comparison between experimental extinction data and theoretical predictions is discussed. The effects of thermal diffusion as well as Lewis number and Prandtl number variations on the diffusion flame are also presented

Heat conduction controlled combustion for scramjet applications

The use of heat conduction flame generated in a premixed supersonic stream is discussed. It is shown that the flame is controlled initially by heat conduction and then by chemical reaction. Such a flame is shorter than the diffusion type of flame and therefore it requires a much shorter burner. The mixing is obtained by injecting the hydrogen in the inlet. Then the inlet can be cooled by film cooling