Influence of parameters on flame expansion in a high-speed flow: Experimental and numerical study

Abstract

Flameholder-stabilized flames are conventional and also commonly used in propulsion and various power generation fields to maintain combustion process. The characteristics of flame expansion were obtained with various blockage ratios, which were observed to be highly sensitive to inlet conditions such as temperatures and velocities. Experiments and simulations combined methodology was performed; also the approach adopted on image processing was calculated automatically through a program written in MATLAB. It was found that the change of flame expansion angle indicated increasing fuel supply could contribute to the growth of flame expansion angle in lean premixed combustion. Besides, the influence of inlet velocity on flame expansion angle varies with different blockage ratios, i.e. under a small blockage ratio (BR = 0.1), flame expansion angle declined with the increase of velocity; however, under a larger blockage ratio (BR = 0.2 or 0.3), flame expansion angle increased firstly and then decreased with the increasing velocity. Likewise, flame expansion angle increased firstly and then decreased with the increasing temperature under BR = 0.2/0.3. In addition, flame expansion angle was almost the same for BR = 0.2 and BR = 0.3 at a higher temperature (900 K), and both of which were bigger than BR = 0.1. Overall, BR = 0.2 is the best for increasing flame expansion angle and reducing total pressure loss. The influence of velocity and temperature on flame expansion angle found from this research are vital for engineering practice and for developing a further image processing method to measure flame boundary.