Mixing Chemical Reactions and Combustion in High-Speed Turbulent Flows

Abstract

Research conducted under the sponsorship of this grant focused on fundamental investigations of mixing, chemical-reaction and combustion processes; in turbulent, subsonic, and supersonic flows. Research on hydrocarbon-combustion was on methane and ethane flames. Flame extinction strain-rate measurements, flame speed, and detailed experiment-simulation comparisons indicate difficulties in modeling of fuel-rich flames. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of axisymmetric unsteady flows in both cold and hot impinging jets were also performed. The research included work on high-speed internal flows of interest to scramjet mixing and combustion, aimed at flow-control and flameholding issues. DNS and Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of Rayleigh-Taylor instability flows studied Reynolds number effects on mixing in this important flow. Advances in high-performance digital-imaging systems were transferred to the laboratory environment enabling measurements unachievable by other means.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 31, 2004
Accession Number
ADA423030

Entities

People

  • Paul E. Dimotakis

Organizations

  • California Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Combustion
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Jet Propulsion
  • Large Eddy Simulation
  • Laser Induced Fluorescence
  • Mechanics
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Reynolds Number
  • Three Dimensional
  • Turbulent Flow
  • Turbulent Mixing

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Technology Areas

  • Hypersonics