On recessed cavity flame-holders in supersonic cross-flows

Flame-holding in a recessed cavity is investigated experimentally in a Mach 2.5 preheated cross-flow for both stable and unstable combustion, with a relatively low preheating. Self-sustained combustion is investigated for stagnation pressures and temperatures reaching 1.4 MPa and 750 °K. In particular, cavity blowout is characterized with respect to cavity aspect ratio (L/D = 2.84 – 3.84), injection strategy ( floor - ramp), aft ramp angle (90 – 22:5°) and multi-fuel mixture (CH ₄ – H₂ or CH₄ – C₂H ₄ blends). The results show that small hydrogen addition to methane leads to significant increase in flame stability, whereas ethylene addition has a more gradual effect. Since the multi-fuels used here are composed of a slow and a fast chemistry fuel, the resulting blowout region has a slow (methane dominant) and a fast (hydrogen or ethylene dominant) branch. Regardless of the fuel composition, the pressure at blowout is close to the non-reacting pressure imposed by the cross-flow, suggesting that combustion becomes potentially unsustainable in the cavity at the sub-atmospheric pressures encountered in these supersonic studies. The effect of preheating is also investigated and results show that the stability domain broadens with increasing stagnation temperature. However, smaller cavities appear less sensitive to the cross-flow preheating, and stable combustion is achieved over a smaller range of fuel flow rate, which may be the result of limited residence and mixing time. The blowout data point obtained at lower fuel flow rate fairly matches the empirical model developed by Rasmussen et al. [81] for oor injection Φ = 0:0028 D_a–.8, where Φ is the equivalence ratio andD_aa the Damkohler number. An alternate model is proposed here that takes into account the ignition to scale the blowout data. Since the mass of air entrained into the cavity cannot be accurately estimated and the cavity temperature is only approximated from the wall temperature, the proposed scaling has some uncertainty. Nevertheless the new Φ – D_a scaling is shown to preserve the subtleties of the blowout trends as seen in the current experimental data.