A Numerical Model of Opposed Flow Flame Spread Over Thin Solid Fuels PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download A Numerical Model of Opposed Flow Flame Spread Over Thin Solid Fuels PDF full book. Access full book title A Numerical Model of Opposed Flow Flame Spread Over Thin Solid Fuels by Amit Kumar (Ph. D.). Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Amit Kumar (Ph. D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Amit Kumar (Ph. D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Jeffrey S. West
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Combustion
Languages : en
Pages : 842
Get Book Here
Book Description
A detailed numerical model of opposed-flow flame spread over solid fuels is developed. The model is used to study flame spread in three regimes of flame spread; the Thermal, Chemical Kinetic and Near Quiescent Regimes. Simplifying assumptions that have been historically applied to this problem are investigated and their effect on the flame spread rate and flame structure are quantified in each regime. A semi-empirical flame spread formula for thermally thick fuels is developed from knowledge of the dominant simplifying assumptions in this regime. Spread rate predictions compare well to experimental and computed results. This semi-empirical model provides field variables which previous theories are unable to predict. Mechanisms of heat transfer ahead of the flame are studied in each regime. Forward heat transfer though the solid fuel becomes more important in the Chemical Kinetic and Near Quiescent Regimes, a previously unknown result. The rate and path of forward heat transfer is found to depend strongly on simplifying assumptions and the flame anchor location. These results explain the relationship between previous analytical and experimental forward heat transfer results. A dimensionless criterion predicting the fuel thickness at which transition from thermally thick to thermally thin is developed which compares well with experimental and computed results. Finite-rate gas-phase chemical kinetics are found to be the cause of the super-thin regime of flame spread. A formula for the limiting flame spread rate in this regime is developed. Correlation of computed spread rates with the Damkohler number is revisited. Uncertainty in residence time due to uncertainties in characteristic velocity and gas-phase properties is found to be the cause of spread in the correlation. The Damkohler number alone explains variations in many parameters although it alone cannot explain changes in gas-phase activation energy. The boundary between the Near Quiescent and Thermal Regime is quantified using a dimensionless radiation number. A new extinction limit for thick fuels in the Near Quiescent Regime is discovered. Radiative losses cause the flame to grow small and spread so slowly that sufficient oxygen is not available to sustain the flame. Recent experimental results confirm this conclusion.
Author: Luca Carmignani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Get Book Here
Book Description
Several aspects of opposed-flow flame spread are experimentally investigated because of their relevance in fire safety studies. Different burning regimes based on the intensity of the opposed flow velocity are identified for acrylic fuels. In downward flame spread, where the flow around a flame is only naturally induced by gravity, the spread rate is highly dependent on fuel size and geometry. The fuel cross-sectional shape is experimentally varied, and a formula which takes into account geometrical effects is proposed by extending previous solutions for two-dimensional flames. The burning region of a solid fuel shows a consistent slope due to the competition between flame spread and surface regression. The angle at the vertex of the pyrolysis region, called burn angle, can be used to indirectly calculate the fuel burning rate. The burn angle depends on fuel thickness; a numerical model and a scale analysis are used to explore the reasons for this behavior. Next, the effect of a forced flow is investigated. The extreme case of blow-off extinction over thin fuels is considered, with flames extinguishing at locations determined by the flow velocity. Results suggest that the interaction between fuel and flow field is more important than the dependence on fuel thickness. The evolution of flame structure and pyrolysis also appear to be driven by flow interactions. A scale analysis is used to explore these dependencies. Finally, previous microgravity experiments are used to explore differences and similarities with ground-based results. By suppressing the buoyant flow, flame radiation becomes essential for the flame spread process. The experimental conditions are simulated numerically to describe the importance of a developing boundary layer in this regime. A numerical parametric study of the radiative emission of flames in microgravity, inspired by the experimental data, shows its dependence on flame area, mass burning rate and flame temperature by changing the burning conditions. For these small flames, soot does not seem to dominate flame radiation, although its generation increases with fuel thickness, oxygen concentration and flow velocity. The experiments in microgravity considered in this work showed flame extinction in a quiescent environment. However, two acrylic cylinders at higher oxygen concentrations from a previous investigation can burn vigorously. To clarify whether these flames are stable, a scale analysis is used to study the influence of surface curvature on radiation losses.
Author: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781722903831
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Get Book Here
Book Description
A numerical model is developed to examine laminar flame spread and extinction over a thin solid fuel in lowspeed concurrent flows. The model provides a more precise fluid-mechanical description of the flame by incorporating an elliptic treatment of the upstream flame stabilization zone near the fuel burnout point. Parabolic equations are used to treat the downstream flame, which has a higher flow Reynolds number. The parabolic and elliptic regions are coupled smoothly by an appropriate matching of boundary conditions. The solid phase consists of an energy equation with surface radiative loss and a surface pyrolysis relation. Steady spread with constant flame and pyrolysis lengths is found possible for thin fuels and this facilitates the adoption of a moving coordinate system attached to the flame with the flame spread rate being an eigen value. Calculations are performed in purely forced flow in a range of velocities which are lower than those induced in a normal gravity buoyant environment. Both quenching and blowoff extinction are observed. The results show that as flow velocity or oxygen percentage is reduced, the flame spread rate, the pyrolysis length, and the flame length all decrease, as expected. The flame standoff distance from the solid and the reaction zone thickness, however, first increase with decreasing flow velocity, but eventually decrease very near the quenching extinction limit. The short, diffuse flames observed at low flow velocities and oxygen levels are consistent with available experimental data. The maximum flame temperature decreases slowly at first as flow velocity is reduced, then falls more steeply close to the quenching extinction limit. Low velocity quenching occurs as a result of heat loss. At low velocities, surface radiative loss becomes a significant fraction of the total combustion heat release. In addition, the shorter flame length causes an increase in the fraction of conduction downstream compared to conduction to the fuel. The...
Author: Yang Long
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cellulose
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Sarzina Hossain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Get Book Here
Book Description
The opposed flow flame spread over flat solid fuels is of fundamental importance to the field of fire safety. Several features of opposed flow flame spread are experimentally, numerically and analytically investigated.Thermally thick slab of PolyMethylMethAcrylate (PMMA) was used to study the effects of opposed flow velocity (8-58 cm/s) and fuel thickness (6.6, 12.1 and 24.5 mm). The experiments were conducted with a Narrow Channel Apparatus (NCA) at Michigan State University (MSU). The flame spread rate results show that the maximum flame spread occurs at a lower flow velocity for relatively thicker fuel. The peak flame spread rate for 6.6 mm, 12.1 mm and 24.5 mm occurs at 18.5 cm/s, 12.1 cm/s and 10.3 cm/s, respectively. Several flame spread regimes: thermal, chemical and regressive burning are identified from the results. Flame spread regimes are usually depend on the opposed flow velocity. However, the flame spread rate for newly found regressive burning regime is independent of flow velocities. Visual observation of the flame indicates that the flame intensity augments with flow velocity for all thicknesses of PMMA. The comparison between NCA data and legacy data for similar material (PMMA) and thickness (12.1 mm) demonstrated excellent agreement, subject to the extension of the numerical and theoretical analysis to include relevant features of the flame spread stretch rate theory. The results also demonstrated the effectiveness of the stretch rate theory for markedly different experimental configurations. Although thick slab is used to perform tests, complete burn out of the samples for thickness 6.6 and 12.1 mm are observed at high opposed flow velocities (30 ℗ł 5 cm/s and higher). On contrary, the thickest sample (24.5 mm) did not go through complete burning. This indicates the nature of surface regression and its impact on flame spread rate.Based on the results, it can be emphasized that the factors controlling the flame front advancement involves both flame spread and surface regression. So, the burnt samples at different opposed flow velocities of 24.5 mm thickness from flame spread study is measured for surface regression depth experimentally. A semi-empirical correlation is developed to relate the flame spread and regression and to determine the mass loss rate from the burnt fuel surface. Mass loss rate is also a key aspect of characterizing the flammability of materials. Results show that the power law dependency of mass loss rate changes with opposed flow velocity. A comparison of power law exponents of current results and results from literature are made. Results demonstrate that the power law dependency at flow velocity 8.2, 10.3 and 12 cm/s is -0.5 which show excellent agreement with legacy work.Next, another study is conducted on the post-flame-spread 24.5 mm PMMA sample, burnt at opposed flow velocity 15 cm/s. Visual observation of post-burn sample shows the formation of significant number of internal bubbles. Three samples of similar thickness burnt at similar condition were investigated for bubble count and size. Results indicate higher and smaller bubble presence near the leading edge of the flame compared to the trailing edge side. Comparison of bubble size distribution with several distribution function demonstrates that the bubble size shows good agreement with Log-normal distribution function.Finally, the transient regression rate has been investigated analytically and numerically. The effect of external heat flux simulating flame heat flux is analyzed for PMMA considering it as an ideal-vaporizing solid. Results indicate a strong dependency of heat flux on material regression for a time duration. After a certain time period, the regression rate became insensitive to heat flux change. A scale analysis is performed to compare the analytical-numerical regression rate results with experimental surface regression depth. The predicted regression followed a similar pattern as the experimental surface regression.
Author: Makoto Endo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aerospace engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Get Book Here
Book Description
Flame spread over solid fuel presents distinctive characteristics in reduced gravity, especially when the forced flow velocity is low. The lack of buoyancy allows a blue, dim flame to sustain where the induced velocity would otherwise blow it off. At such low velocities, a quenching limit exists where the soot content is low and the effect of radiative heat loss becomes important. The objective of this study is to establish a high fidelity numerical model to simulate the growth and extinction of flame on solid fuels in a reduced gravity environment. The great importance of the spectral dependency of the gas phase absorption and emission were discovered through the model development and therefore, Statistical Narrow-Band Correlated-k (SNB-CK) spectral model was implemented.The model is applied to an experimental configuration from the recent space experiment, Burning And Suppression of Solids (BASS) project conducted aboard the International Space Station. A poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) sphere (initial diameter of 2cm) was placed in a small wind tunnel (7.6cm x 7.6cm x 17cm) within the Microgravity Science Glovebox where flow speed and oxygen concentration were varied.Data analysis of the BASS experiment is also an important aspect of this research, especially because this is the first space experiment that used thermally thick spherical samples. In addition to the parameters influencing the flammability of thin solids, the degree of interior heat-up becomes an important parameter for thick solids. For spherical samples, not only is the degree of internal heating constantly changing, but also the existence of stagnation point, shoulder, and wake regions resulting in a different local flow pattern, hence a different flame-solid interaction.Parametric studies using the numerical model were performed against (1) chemical reaction parameters, (2) forced flow velocity, (3) oxygen concentration and (4) amount of preheating (bulk temperature of the solid fuel). Flame Spread Rate (FSR) was used to evaluate the transient effect and maximum flame temperature, standoff distance and radiative loss ratio were used to evaluate the spontaneous response of the gas phase to understand the overall response of the burning solid fuel. After evaluating the individual effect of each parameter, the efficacy of each parameter was compared. Selected results of this research are:[1]Experimental data from BASS and numerical simulation both showed that within the time periodbetween ignition until the flame tip reaches the shoulder of the sample, the flame length and timehave almost a linear relation.[2]Decreasing forced flow velocity increases the radiative loss ratio whereas decreasing oxygen molefraction decreases the radiative loss ratio. This finding must be considered in the effort to replicatethe behavior of flame spread over thick solid fuels in microgravity on earth.[3]Although the standoff distance will increase when the forced flow velocity is decreased as well aswhen the oxygen mole fraction is decreased, the forced flow velocity has a much stronger effect onthe standoff distance than the oxygen mole fraction.[4]Unlike the previous two comparisons, the effect of forced flow velocity and oxygen mole fraction onthe maximum flame temperature was at similar level, reduction of either parameter would result inlowering the maximum flame temperature.[5]The effect of preheating on the flame spread rate becomes stronger when either the oxygen flowrate or forced flow velocity becomes larger. Depending on which element is more important, we candistinguish oxygen flow rate driven flame spread from preheating driven flame spread.Findings of this research are being utilized in the design of the upcoming space experiment, Growth and Extinction Limits of solid fuel (GEL) project. This research is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This work made use of the High Performance Computing Resource in the Core Facility for Advanced Research Computing at Case Western Reserve University and the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
Author: Ameya Subodh Udgaonkar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Paul Vincent Ferkul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Jeanhyuk Park
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Flame spread
Languages : en
Pages : 131
Get Book Here
Book Description
Building fire, Forrest fire, and warehouse compartment fire are some of the most frequently occurring practical fire hazards in modern world. Although these types of hazards seem irrelevant from one another, they have some things in common from the perspective of fire protection engineering, in that they all have a very similar fundamental fuel-gap configuration, or discrete fuel configuration. There has been some studies in the past regarding the subject, yet it is not the most popular in the field. Furthermore, there is even fewer, if not any, numerical analysis done to fires in discrete fuel configuration. Discrete fuel arrangements represent some practical fire hazard situations, such as compartment fires in enclosed vehicles. In this study, an unsteady two-dimensional numerical model (Fire Dynamics Simulator) was used to simulate concurrent flame spreadover paper-like thin solid fuels in discrete configurations in microgravity (0g, where a20cm/s flow is imposed) and in normal gravity (1g). An array of ten 1cm-long fuel segments is uniformly distributed in the flow direction (0g) or in the vertical direction (1g).A hot spot ignition source is applied at the upstream leading edge of the first fuel seg-ment. The separation distance between the fuel segments is a parameter in this study, ranging from 0 (corresponding to a continuous fuel) to 3cm. Using this setup, the spread rate of the flame base and the fuel burning rate were studied. The spread rate in 1g and 0g increases with increasing separation distance. This is due to the gaps in the discrete fuel that force the flame base to jump to the subsequent fuel segment when the upstream segment burns out. On the other hand, the fuel burning rate behaves differently in 1g versus 0g. At a flow velocity of 20 cm/s in 0g, the flame reaches a limiting length and the flame length is approximately the same ( 4cm) for all fuel configurations. Therefore, as the separation distance increases, the preheating length (the fuel area exposed to the flame) decreases, resulting in a smaller burning rate. In 1g, the buoyancy driven flow accelerates as it rises, resulting in a longer flame as the separation distance increases. In all simulated configurations, the flame extends to the last fuel segment before the first fuel segment burns out and the flame spans the entire set of fuel segments. However, flame standoff distance reduces at the gaps between fuel segments, and in some con-figurations, the flame breaks into multiple flamelets. The shorter standoff distance and intense burning at each flamelet base result in a larger total burning rate as the separation distance increases.
