Experimental study of spherical-flame acceleration mechanisms in large-scale propane–air flames

• DOI: 10.1016/j.proci.2014.06.118
• Publication Date: 2014-07-22T02:45:13Z
• Authors: C. Regis Bauwens; Jeffrey M. Bergth...; Sergey B. Dorofeev
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0204 chemical engineering

Abstract Large-scale experiments examining spherical-flame propagation of propane–air flames up to a diameter of 1.2 m were performed. Throughout these experiments, the growth of the Darrieus–Landau instability was directly observed and detailed measurements show that the increase of flame velocity follows a pattern of self-similar oscillatory growth that has not been previously reported. These oscillations are found to be the result of periodic growth and saturation of a narrow range of length scales that follows each generation of cell formation. Based on these observations, a new method to estimate the fractal-acceleration exponent is proposed based on the amplitude and frequency of these oscillations. Comparisons between the fractal exponents derived by this method and a direct power law fit show reasonable agreement with one another, as well as with values reported by previous studies.