Supergravity effects on flame propagation and structure in hydrogen/air mixtures

Abstract

In the current work, we investigated hydrogen/air flame propagation under supergravity conditions. Results show that when gravity is in the same/opposite direction as flame propagation, it leads to acceleration/deceleration of the flame, and that such an effect could substantially modify the flame propagation and structure at high gravity levels. Furthermore, for the absolute and relative flame propagation speeds, the gravity-affected flame speed shows opposite trends as the absolute flame speed is more affected by the local induced flow field, while the relative flame speeds are controlled by the super-adiabatic or sub-adiabatic flame temperature. The gravity-affected thermal and chemical flame structures are also examined through the influence of the mixture equivalence ratio, pressure, and flame stretch.