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U.S. Department of Energy
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Influence of exothermicity on the shape of a diffusion flame

Conference ·
OSTI ID:5359501

The effects of exothermicity of combustion on the contours of gaseous, unconfined, planar and axi-symmetric, jet diffusion flames, as well as on the structures of their flow fields, are analyzed. For the sake of clarity, the problem is formulated in the simplest possible way. The flame is treated as essentially laminar, the reaction rates are considered infinite, the medium is assumed to behave as a perfect gas with constant specific heats, its Schmidt and Prandtl numbers being unity and viscosity proportional to the temperature, while the buoyancy effects are neglected. Under such circumstances the problem lends itself to treatment by the Shvab-Zeldovich technique. The results, derived as an inverse to self-similar solutions in the incompressible domain obtained by a Dorodnitsyn-Howarth transformation of the governing equations for compressible flow, are expressed in terms of algebraic formulae. In applications to hydrogen-air and a number of hydrocarbon-air mixtures, they turn out to be in an amazing agreement with experimental data under zero gravity conditions.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA); Technion-Israel Inst. of Tech., Haifa
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
5359501
Report Number(s):
LBL-13673; CONF-820801-6; ON: DE82005766
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English