Opposed Jet Burner Approach for Characterizing Flameholding Potentials of Hydrocarbon Scramjet Fuels

Opposed Jet Burner (OJB) tools have been used extensively by the authors to measure Flame Strength (FS) extinction limits of laminar H2/N2‐air and (recently) hydrocarbon (HC)‐air Counterflow Diffusion Flames (CFDFs) at one atm. This paper details normalization of FSs of N2diluted H2 and HC systems to account for effects of fuel composition, temperature, pressure, jet diameter, inflow Reynolds number, and inflow velocity profile (plug, contoured nozzle; and parabolic, straight tube). Normalized results exemplify a sensitive accurate means of validating, globally, reduced chemical kinetic models at ~ 1 atm and the relatively low temperatures approximating the loss of non-premixed “idealized” flameholding, e.g., in scramjet combustors. Laminar FS is defined locally as maximum air input velocity, Uair, that sustains combustion of a counter-jet of g-fuel at extinction. It uniquely characterizes a fuel. And global axial strain rate at extinction (Uair normalized by nozzle or tube diameter, Dn or t) can be compared directly with computed extinction limits, determined using either a 1-D Navier Stokes stream-function solution, using detailed transport and finite rate chemistry, or (better yet) a detailed 2-D Navier Stokes numerical simulation. The experimental results define an “idealized flameholding reactivity scale” that shows wide ranging (50 x) normalized FS’s for various vaporized-liquid and gaseous HCs, including, in ascending order: JP-10, methane, JP-7, n-heptane, n-butane, propane, ethane, and ethylene. Results from H2‐air produce a unique and exceptionally strong flame that agree within ~1% of a recent 2-D numerically simulated FS for a 3 mm tube-OJB. Thus we suggest that experimental FS’s and/or FS ratios, for various neat and blended HCs w/ and w/o additives, offer accurate global tests of chemical kinetic models at the Ts and Ps of extinction. In conclusion, we argue the FS approach is more direct and fundamental, for assessing, e.g., idealized scramjet flameholding potentials, than measurements of laminar burning velocity or blowout in a Perfectly Stirred Reactor, because the latter characterize premixed combustion in the absence of aerodynamic strain. And FS directly measures a chemical kinetic characteristic of non-premixed combustion at typical flameholding temperatures. It mimics conditions where gfuels are typically injected into a subsonic flameholding recirculation zone that captures air, where the effects of aerodynamic strain and associated multi-component diffusion become important.