Study on the Transformation of Combustion Mechanism and Ejection Phenomenon of Aluminum Particles in Methane Flame

Abstract

In solid propellants, the combustion of aluminum particles often occurs in a hydrocarbon combustion atmosphere. In order to study the combustion energy release process of aluminum particles during propellant combustion, we carried out a study of the combustion behavior of aluminum particles in the combustion atmosphere of hydrocarbon fuels and conducted experiments using a plane flame burner to observe the combustion process of aluminum particles in a methane plane flame combustion atmosphere. High-speed microscopy revealed a new special combustion phenomenon: ejection combustion with the release of internal components from a point on the particle at high speed, in addition to the already observed particle microexplosions. Both phenomena show faster-than-normal combustion with short combustion energy release times. The experiments also showed that the combustion behavior of aluminum particles changes with the combustion environment. As the ambient effective oxidizer mole fraction increases from 13% to 29%, the basic combustion behavior of aluminum particles changes from vapor evaporation combustion to multiphase surface combustion. In addition, the percentage of aluminum particles burned by ejection increases from 18.2% to 49.2%, which becomes the dominant mechanism in the special combustion phenomenon of aluminum particles. This paper argues that the multiphase surface combustion provides higher heating rates due to the heat production collected on the particles and the diffusion combustion in the air around the aluminum particles, compared with the evaporation combustion. Therefore, the rate of temperature rise within the particle is affected by the ambient oxidant concentration, leading to a transformation from microexplosion to ejection combustion. The effect of the temperature of the combustion environment on this phenomenon has also been investigated through experiments conducted under different conditions.