Abstract
Microgravity combustion has always been one of the key and frontier research fields in the international combustion community. Why has microgravity combustion attracted so much attention? First of all, fire safety and combustion reliability are imminent to spacecraft. Secondly, the convection effect is weakened in the microgravity environment, and the basic combustion phenomena are more prominent, which is greatly helpful to study the fundamental laws of combustion and develop reliable combustion models for fuels. This article systematically summarized and analyzed the research focuses, namely fire safety of spacecraft, droplet combustion, soot formation and flame structures, and current research status in the field of microgravity combustion during the past decades of years. In this paper, motivations, methods, and achievements of fire safety in spacecraft and fundamental combustion characteristics in microgravity were analyzed, which provide a comprehensive review for the microgravity combustion research. Suggestions for the development direction of microgravity combustion science were also made. Improving the application of efficient and clean combustion and optimizing fire safety strategies of new generation spacecraft materials should still be regarded as two critical targets in the future.
Highlights
The study of microgravity combustion could be traced back to the investigation of microgravity droplet combustion in a simple drop tower in 1957 by Kumagai et al [1]
Why did many countries in the world invest countless money and manpower to study combustion in microgravity? This paper introduced the intents of the scientists and the efforts they have made in studying microgravity combustion
In-depth exploration of soot generation and oxidation mechanism during the combustion process is of great significance for improving combustion equipment as well as the modeling of droplet dynamics
Summary
The study of microgravity combustion could be traced back to the investigation of microgravity droplet combustion in a simple drop tower in 1957 by Kumagai et al [1]. The studies of combustion in microgravity conditions can be generally carried out experimentally and numerically. Most combustion experiments in microgravity were taken using drop towers. The complexity and high cost of experiments in microgravity environment drove researchers to develop some calculation models in microgravity. To pursue high computational efficiency, combustion simulation models need to be simplified, and the reliability of the calculation results should be verified by some reported experimental results. It is complicated and high-demand to create a microgravity environment on earth; besides, space stations can provide long-term continuous microgravity conditions, these facilities are extremely expensive. To gain a thorough insight into the proposes, methods and achievements of microgravity combustion, investigations on the fire safety of spacecraft, development of droplet and combustion theory were reviewed and summarized, and suggestions for the future research of microgravity combustion were made
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