Experimental study of spherical-flame acceleration mechanisms in large-scale propane–air flames

Large-scale experiments examining spherical-flame propagation of propane–air flames up to a diameter of 1.2m were performed. Throughout these experiments, the growth of the Darrieus–Landau instability was directly observed and detailed measurements show that the increase of flame velocity follows a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 2015, Vol.35 (2), p.2059-2066
Main Authors: Bauwens, C. Regis, Bergthorson, Jeffrey M., Dorofeev, Sergey B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amplitudes
Combustion
Expanding spherical flames
Explosions
Exponents
Flame acceleration
Flame instability
Fractal analysis
Instability
Oscillations
Power law
Saturation
Self-similarity
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Summary:Large-scale experiments examining spherical-flame propagation of propane–air flames up to a diameter of 1.2m were performed. Throughout these experiments, the growth of the Darrieus–Landau instability was directly observed and detailed measurements show that the increase of flame velocity follows a pattern of self-similar oscillatory growth that has not been previously reported. These oscillations are found to be the result of periodic growth and saturation of a narrow range of length scales that follows each generation of cell formation. Based on these observations, a new method to estimate the fractal-acceleration exponent is proposed based on the amplitude and frequency of these oscillations. Comparisons between the fractal exponents derived by this method and a direct power law fit show reasonable agreement with one another, as well as with values reported by previous studies.
ISSN:1540-7489
1873-2704
DOI:10.1016/j.proci.2014.06.118