The role of flow interaction in flame–flame interaction events in a dual burner experiment

Abstract

A dual burner experiment is used to investigate how flow interactions affect local flame-flame interaction in turbulent premixed flames. The presence of adjacent flows influences the local structure of these flames and understanding the sensitivity of these flames to adjacent flows is essential for multi-nozzle combustion devices. To study this sensitivity, a high-aspect-ratio Bunsen flame operating at a constant flow velocity is placed adjacent to an identical burner with non-reacting flow at varying velocities. High-speed OH-planar laser induced fluorescence and stereoscopic-particle image velocimetry measurements are performed to capture flame-front locations and velocity fields. A non-rigid image registration technique is used to calculate the local flame-area variations that occur due to topological differences, and conditional statistics are extracted to relate the local behavior to changes observed in the global behavior of the flames. Extracted flame curvatures and time-averaged progress variables conditioned on flame-flame interactions show differences existing in the inner and outer flame branches near the flame-attachment region. Statistics of these results are presented and compared for all test cases.