Abstract |
A research program has being conducted to study the mechanisms controlling the spread of flames in an oxidizing gas flow moving in the direction of flame propagation. During this reporting period research has been conducted to study the effect of the oxidizer flow characteristics on the concurrent flame spread over thick PMMA sheets. The parameters varied in the experiments are the oxidizer flow velocity, turbulence intensity and oxygen concentration, and the geometrical orientation (floor and ceiling). Their effect on the flame spread process is studied by measuring the rate of flame spread, flame length, surface heat flux, products of combustion and soot. The results of the experiments show that the combined effect of flow velocity, turbulence intensity, and oxygen concentration has a comnplex influence on the flame spread process. At low flow velocity, the flame spread rate increases monotonically with turbulence intensity. At high flow velocity, however, the flame spread rate increases with flow turbulence at low turbulence intensities, but it decreases at high turbulence intensity values. The effect is more pronounced at high oxygen concentration. These trends appear to be due to a strong influence of the turbulence intensity on the flame temperature and length, and on that heat flux from the flame to the solid fuel. Turbulence enhances mixing, which increases the flame temperatrue and then the heat flux. |