Effects of radiation and compression on propagating spherical flames of methane/air mixtures near the lean flammability limit

Journal Article · Tue Dec 14 23:00:00 EST 2010 · Combustion and Flame

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COMBUSTFLAME.2010.07.010· OSTI ID:21390731

Chen, Zheng ^[1]

---

1. State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871 (China)

Large discrepancies between the laminar flame speeds and Markstein lengths measured in experiments and those predicted by simulations for ultra-lean methane/air mixtures bring a great concern for kinetic mechanism validation. In order to quantitatively explain these discrepancies, a computational study is performed for propagating spherical flames of lean methane/air mixtures in different spherical chambers using different radiation models. The emphasis is focused on the effects of radiation and compression. It is found that the spherical flame propagation speed is greatly reduced by the coupling between thermal effect (change of flame temperature or unburned gas temperature) and flow effect (inward flow of burned gas) induced by radiation and/or compression. As a result, for methane/air mixtures near the lean flammability limit, the radiation and compression cause large amounts of under-prediction of the laminar flame speeds and Markstein lengths extracted from propagating spherical flames. Since radiation and compression both exist in the experiments on ultra-lean methane/air mixtures reported in the literature, the measured laminar flame speeds and Markstein lengths are much lower than results from simulation and thus cannot be used for kinetic mechanism validation. (author)

• OSTI ID: 21390731
• Journal Information: Combustion and Flame, Journal Name: Combustion and Flame Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 157; ISSN CBFMAO; ISSN 0010-2180
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
AIR
COMBUSTION KINETICS
COMPRESSION
COUPLING
FLAME PROPAGATION
FLAMMABILITY
HEAT LOSSES
LAMINAR FLAMES
LENGTH
LIMITING VALUES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
METHANE
MIXTURES
Markstein length
Propagating spherical flames
RADIANT HEAT TRANSFER
SIMULATION
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
VALIDATION
VELOCITY