Publications

Investigation of flame acceleration in gaseous and liquid fuels in the sandia/Purdue 20 ft. Combustion tube facility

Graziano, Tyler J.; Venkatesh, Prashanth B.; Bane, Sally P.M.; Meyer, Scott E.; Grubelich, Mark C.

A 20 foot long, 10 inch inner diameter combustion tube facility has been developed at Purdue’s Zucrow Laboratories for performing fundamental investigations on flame acceleration and deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT). The facility can be used to test gaseous, liquid, or solid fuels in a variety of tube configurations. The fuel/oxidizer mixture is ignited at the closed end of the tube, and the flame propagation velocity and local pressure are measured using ion probes and pressure transducers located along the length of the tube. Experiments have been conducted for a range of gaseous and liquid fuels in the unobstructed tube with an open end, and with a single orifice plate installed mid-way down the tube length. The relative performance in terms of maximum flame velocity and acceleration and the potential for DDT are compared for the different fuels. Preliminary scaling analysis is performed to explore trends in the data and to investigate the relative influence of important physical parameters on the flame acceleration.