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Experimental Investigation of the Flame Front Propagation Characteristic During Light-round Ignition in an Annular Combustor

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Abstract

The light-round process in a transparent annular combustor which comprises 16 swirling injectors injecting lean premixed propane/air mixtures is experimentally investigated. This annular combustor is derived from the ‘MICCA’ combustor, pioneered by EM2C laboratory (Bourgouin et al., Combust. Flame 160(8), 1398, 2013).The annular chamber is formed by two transparent concentric quartz tubes, which provides optical access to high-speed imaging to diagnose the chemiluminescence of flame fronts. Two ignition modes (i.e. two extreme conditions in scheduling fuel delivery and igniter sparking), controlled by ignition procedure are investigated, thus the FFSL (Fuel First, Spark Later) and the SFFL (Spark First, Fuel Later) modes. These two ignition modes exhibit different patterns of injector-to-injector flame propagation during the light-round process. The light-around time and mean circumferential flame propagation speed are obtained for various conditions. The influence of thermal expansion, velocity fluctuation and convection to the light-round process is investigated and compared for two ignition modes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very thankful for the fruitful discussions and highlight comments from Prof. Sébastien Candel, Prof. Daniel Durox, and Dr. Kevin Prieur of the Lab EM2C; And the authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, under Grant No. 91541108 and No. 91841302, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, under Grant No. 2017FZA4032.

Funding

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, under Grant No. 91541108 and No. 91841302, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, under Grant No. 2017FZA4032.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Yifan Xia, Changhong Linghu, Yao Zheng, Chenran Ye, Chengbiao Ma & Gaofeng Wang

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409, USA

    Haiwen Ge

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  1. Yifan Xia
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Correspondence to Gaofeng Wang.

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Xia, Y., Linghu, C., Zheng, Y. et al. Experimental Investigation of the Flame Front Propagation Characteristic During Light-round Ignition in an Annular Combustor. Flow Turbulence Combust 103, 247–269 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10494-019-00018-y

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