Investigation on decelerated propagation of hydrogen-air premixed flames in confined space

Abstract

This study investigates the flame propagation characteristics of hydrogen-air mixture explosion in confined spaces through a small-scale experiment and simulations, in which the experiment were conducted at normal temperature and pressure, covering a wide range of equivalence ratios (0.8-3.5) to obtain flame evolution and propagation velocity. The results indicate that enhanced thermal-diffusive instability leads to an increased cellular structure in hydrogen-air flames, with flame propagation speed increasing with radius enlargement; the numerical simulation results demonstrate that flame propagation speed is generally divided into acceleration, deceleration, and weak rebound phases; flame deceleration is mainly caused by increased pressure and wall constraints. The flame deceleration critical radius (Rcr) exhibits a trend of initially decreasing and then increasing with increasing equivalence ratio, primarily due to the influence of the pressure rise rate, while the magnitude of the deceleration factor is not directly related to the equivalence ratio. Additionally, an empirical formula summarizing the relationship between flame propagation speed during the deceleration phase, laminar burning velocity, and pressure is as follows: v=2.7∙SL0∙(P/P0)-0.48.