Proceedings of the Fortieth National Conference on Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power December 12-14, 2013, NIT Hamirpur,

Himachal Pradesh, India

FMFP2013_121_

A SURVEY OF FLAME PROPAGATION IN A VORTEX CORE

Debanik Bhattacharjee Department of Mechanical Engineering, Future Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, West Bengal E-mail: debanik1@gmail.com

ABSTRACT Lean premixed combustion due to large fluctuations in heat release, followed by undesirable increase in flame propagation velocity, can lead to sudden flame flashback. Early experiments carried out to investigate the flame propagation in a tube have observed the fundamental speed of flame which is also known as burning velocity. Flame propagation along a vortex axis follows an altogether different mechanism. It has been found that the flame speed is governed by other than physico-chemical factors. Vortex breakdown was suggested as one of the possible mechanism due to abrupt changes in density. This survey traces the history of the studies of flame propagation in a vortex tube and also presents the latest developments in the subject.

INTRODUCTION

A BRIEF HISTORY

Moore and Martin were the first, to deal with flame propagation along a vortex axis. Their report appeared in Letters to the Editor in the journal Fuel in 1953[16]. They used a glass tube 125-cm long and 47 mm diameter, one end of which was closed and fitted with a 6 mm diameter entry nozzle tangential to the tube circumference 1 cm from the closed end. They reported that a tongue of flame, projected into the unburned gas within the tube mouth, extended eventually to the closed end. They emphasized that such flame flash-back occurred even when the flow rate exceeded the critical value for blow off, if the mixture was introduced not tangentially but straightforward. Flame speeds were not measured. It was only mentioned that the phenomenon was not stable; regular pulses of flame passed down the tube with a velocity dependent on the strength and rate of flow of the mixture. This author was unable to trace their following work, although it is written in the last part of their report that the investigation is continuing. Then almost two decades later, In 1971, McCormack measured the flame speed in the vortex rings of rich propane/air mixtures [17]. In this experiment, the flame speed was 300 cm/s. McCormacks research was supported by the Ohio