Flame Shapes of Fuel Droplet Cloud in High Temperature Gaseous Environment under Micro-gravity

In order to investigate the spray combustion mechanism, a new methodology (Fine Wire Sustaining method) was established. Fine wires of 14μm in diameter were used to sustain the droplets. Any arrangement of the droplets could be performed with this method. In this study, 33 fuel droplets arranged in symmetrically were subjected to the quiescent high temperature air in an electric furnace. The temperature of the environment air was about 1000K. Fuel was n-eicosane and the mean droplet diameter was 0.58mm. The standard deviation of the droplet diameter was 0.02mm. A high-speed video camera of 250ftp was provided to observe the auto-ignition and flames of fuel droplet clouds. The experiments were done at atmospheric pressure using the JAMIC drop shaft that provides 10 seconds of effective period of time for the micro-gravity. As the results, the time histories of the diameter of the particle flames had maximum and that of the diameter of the group flame had the minimum.