An Experimental and Numerical Study of the Laminar Flame Speed of Jet Fuel Surrogate Blends

Kerosene-type fuels are the most common aviation fuel, and an understanding of their combustion properties is essential for achieving optimized gas turbine operation. Presently, however, there is lack of experimental flame speed data available by which to validate the chemical kinetic mechanisms necessary for effective computational studies. In this study, premixed jet fuel surrogate blends and commercial kerosene are studied using particle image velocimetry in a stagnation flame geometry. Numerical simulations of each experiment are obtained using the CHEMKIN-PRO software package and the JetSurF 2.0 mechanism. The neat hydrocarbon surrogates investigated include n-decane, methylcyclohexane, and toluene, which represent the alkane, cycloalkane, and aromatic components of conventional aviation fuel, respectively. Two blends are studied in this paper. The first is a binary blend formulated to reproduce the laminar flame speed of aviation fuel using a mixing rule based on the laminar flame speed and adiabatic flame temperature of the hydrocarbon components, weighted by their respective mixture mole fractions. The second blend is a tertiary blend formulated to emulate the hydrogen to carbon ratio of the kerosene studied. All of the considered fuels and blends are studied at three equivalence ratios, corresponding to lean, stoichiometric, and rich conditions, and at several stretch rates. The centreline axial velocity profiles from numerical simulations are directly compared to the measured velocity profiles to validate the mechanism at each condition. The difference between the experimental and simulated reference flame speed is used to infer the true unstretched laminar flame speed of the mixture. These results allow the effectiveness of the different blending methodologies to be assessed.