Abstract
Surrogate mixtures are often used to emulate gas phase combustion characteristics of real fuels, such as heating value, sooting characteristics, and propensity to ignition. These cannot be used as such in liquid phase applications, where multi-phase processes, such as spray injection, are important. Typically, for these applications, surrogates are proposed by matching targets such as density, viscosity, and distillation curves between the real fuel and the surrogate. However, these targets do not pertain to a combustion environment. One attractive option to include evaporation and phase equilibrium dynamics in the surrogate definition is to study the combustion characteristics of an isolated droplet. This project involves simulating the burning process of isolated fuel droplets at low gravity for neat fuel components as well as mixtures of hydrocarbons relevant as transportation fuel surrogates. Evaporation rates of fuels in this simple configuration are useful quantities to describe the multi-phase effects in a combusting environment.
In this project, numerical solution procedure to predict the droplet burning accounting for the interface conditions will be developed. Techniques to obtain solutions with reduced computational time will be explored. The validity of the model will be ascertained based on the vast data available in the literature. Thereafter, evaporation rate rules will be developed for the surrogate mixture in terms of the components, and investigated if it is indeed an appropriate measure or if other additional parameters may be needed to come up with a good surrogate valid for liquid-phase applications.
Pre-requisite
MS students under the ID category
Liking to write stand alone solvers
Strong desire to pick up combustion kinetics concepts (no prior familiarity is required for kinetics).