Abstract
The purpose of this study has been to present an asymptotic approach to describe the structure and extinction of methane-air diffusion flames employing the mechanism in Table II of Chapter 1, to explore the effect of variable density in the interpretation of experimental results, and to make detailed comparisons with experiments and numerics. The present theory is seen to predict well the trend of the extinction scalar dissipation rates with dilution, while the alternative approach [16], in which the fuel-consumption zone is coupled to the rest of the structure, is seen to give better extinction predictions at higher dilutions.
The interpretation of experimentally measured strain rates is shown to depend on the method by which the integral I of Eq. (7.3) is evaluated. When the results for a variable-density mixing layer are used, the extinction scalar dissipation rates are increased by about factor of two over the values obtained with constant density. In addition, it appears that the detailed numerical predictions of scalar dissipation rates agree better with the experimental results when variable density is considered, if inaccuracies in currently available rotational-flow descriptions are taken into account.
It is very likely that rates of the fuel chemistry do influence extinction conditions but do not change the trend predicted here, which is seen to agree well with the numerical integrations. Based on present comparisons, the results suggest that the correct model lies between the two limiting cases considered here, and to confirm this asymptotic analyses of diffusion flames must be carried out for conditions Under which the parameter ω of Seshadri and Peters [19] is order of unity.
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Chelliah, H.K., Treviño, C., Williams, F.A. (1991). Asymptotic analysis of methane-air diffusion flames. In: Smooke, M.D. (eds) Reduced Kinetic Mechanisms and Asymptotic Approximations for Methane-Air Flames. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 384. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035369
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0035369
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