Jet fuel ignition variability : constant volume spray and shock tube experiments

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Authors
Burden, Sean
Issue Date
2017-05
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
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Mechanical engineering
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Abstract
Ignition delay times for conventional and alternative jet and diesel fuels of interest to the United States Department of Defense were measured in a constant volume spray combustion chamber and a shock tube in homogenous gas-phase reflected shock experiments. Experiments were performed in the spray environment for spray of fuel into hot air at 1, 2.14, and 4 MPa pressure and 620-830 K. Shock tube experiments were performed for homogenous stoichiometric fuel/air mixtures at pressures of 20, 40, and 80 atm and for 660-1310 K. These experiments characterize the relative reactivity of the fuels, the dependence of reactivity on temperature and pressure, and correlate reactivity between the spray and homogenous gas-phase environments. Important results include three observed temperature regimes in the shock tube experiments and observed increased pressure dependence in the negative-temperature-coefficient (NTC) regime in both the shock tube and spray ignition experiments. The spray experiments show decreasing temperature dependence as the temperature increases from the low-temperature regime towards the entrance of the NTC. The fuel reactivity trends measured with the derived cetane number (DCN) in the spray experiments correlate in a power law relationship with ignition delay measured in the shock tube in the NTC, indicating DCN is a measure of NTC gas-phase chemical kinetic reactivity. The experimental database reported here should be valuable for the future development of chemical kinetic models for jet and diesel fuels.
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May 2017
School of Engineering
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
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