Emissions in short-gated ns/ps/fs-LIBS for fuel-to-air ratio measurements in methane-air flames

Abstract

A study of short-gated 10 nanosecond (ns), 100 picosecond (ps), and 100 femtosecond (fs) laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) was conducted for fuel-to-air ratio (FAR) measurements in an atmospheric Hencken flame. The intent of the work is to understand which emission lines are available near the optical range in each pulse width regime and which emission ratios may be favorable for generating equivalence ratio calibration curves. The emission spectra in the range of 550–800 nm for ns-LIBS and ps-LIBS are mostly similar with slightly elevated atomic oxygen lines by ps-LIBS. Spectra from fs-LIBS show the lowest continuum background and prominent individual atomic lines, though have significantly weaker ionic emission from nitrogen. A qualitative explanation based on assumed local thermodynamic equilibrium and electron temperatures calculated by the N I I ( 565 n m ) and N I I ( 594 n m ) emissions is presented. In studying line emission ratios for FAR calculation, it is found that H α ( 656 n m ) / N I I ( 568 n m ) is best for FAR measurements with ns-LIBS and remains viable for ps-LIBS, while H α ( 656 n m ) / O I ( 777 n m ) is optimal for the ps-LIBS and fs-LIBS cases. Due to low continuum background and short time delay for spectra collection, fs-LIBS is very promising for high-speed FAR measurements using short-gated LIBS.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 12, 2021
Source ID
10.1364/ao.418453

Entities

People

  • Mark Gragston
  • Naibo Jiang
  • Paul Hsu
  • Sukesh Roy
  • Zhili Zhang

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Air Force Research Laboratory
  • National Science Foundation
  • United States Department of Energy
  • University of Tennessee

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.
  • Spectroscopy.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Directed Energy - Lasers
  • Microelectronics