Measurement and Simulation of Autoignition-Assisted Flame Speed of N-Heptane Mixture at Elevated Gas Temperature

Abstract

Laminar flame speed and autoignition are two fundamental characteristics of a hydrocarbon’s combustion. These two characteristics are extensively studied due to their importance in designing and developing combustion systems. However, a regime in which these two characteristics simultaneously affect the combustion process is not well understood. Thus, the primary focus of this investigation is to understand the autoignition-assisted flame regime prior to the first-stage heat release. The premixed mixture of n-heptane in oxygen–nitrogen–diluent at an equivalence ratio of 1.0, a compressed gas pressure of 6.85 bar, and compressed gas temperatures of 621 K (when using argon) and 616 K (when using helium) were studied in this work. At these initial conditions, the mixture ignition delays are 32.31 ms (using argon) and 53.92 ms (using helium). The flame-propagating images were recorded using a high-speed camera at different spark ignition times to measure the flame locations. The Rapid Compression Machine─Flame (RCM-Flame) apparatus was used to perform experiments, and one-dimensional modeling and three-dimensional numerical modeling were performed. The simulations provided data to understand the effect of stretch on the measured spherical burning velocity. The measured and simulated autoignition-assisted laminar flame speeds were in excellent agreement, the linear method can be used to remove the stretch from the spherical burning velocity, and the autoignition-assisted flame speeds show a negligible dependency on the spark ignition times when the first-stage heat release is negligible.