Effects of soot formation on shape of a nonpremixed laminar flame established in a shear boundary layer in microgravity

Abstract

A numerical study was performed to give a quantitative description of a heavily sooting, nonpremixed laminar flame established in a shear boundary layer in microgravity. Controlling mechanisms of three dimensional flow, combustion, soot and radiation are coupled. Soot volume fraction were predicted by using three approaches, referred respectively to as the fuel, acetylene and PAH inception models. It is found that the PAH inception model, which is based on the formation of two and three-ringed aromatic species, reproduces correctly the experimental data from a laminar ethylene diffusion flame. The PAH inception model serves later to better understand flame quenching, flame stand-off distance and soot formation as a function of the dimensionless volume coefficient, defined as Cq = VF/Vox where VF is the fuel injection velocity, and Vox air stream velocity. The present experiments showed that a blue unstable flame, negligible radiative feedback, may change to a yellow stable flame, significant radiative loss with an increase of Cq; this experimental trend was numerically reproduced. The flame quenching occurs at the trailing edge due to radiative heat loss which is significantly amplified by increasing VF or decreasing Vox, favouring soot formation. Along a semi-infinite fuel zone, the ratio, df/db, where df is the flame standoff distance, and db the boundary layer thickness, converges towards a constant value of 1.2, while soot resides always within the boundary layer far away from the flame sheet.