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ABSTRACT
Hot surface ignition is relevant in the context of industrial safety. In the present work, two-dimensional simulations using simplified kinetics of the buoyancy-driven flow and ignition of a slightly lean n-hexane–air mixture by a rapidly heated surface (glowplug) are reported. Experimentally, ignition is most often observed to occur at the top of the glowplug; numerical results reproduce this trend and shed light on this behavior. The numerical predictions of the flow field and hot surface temperature at ignition are in quantitative agreement with experiments. The simulations suggest that flow separation plays a crucial role in creating zones where convective losses are minimized and heat diffusion is maximized, resulting in the critical conditions for ignition to take place.
Acknowledgments
This work was carried out in the Explosion Dynamics Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. Special thanks go to Dr. Lorenz Boeck and Andreas Kink for their help with the experimental setup and improving the quality of the diagnostics.
Funding
J. Melguizo-Gavilanes was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. S. Coronel, R. Mével, and A. Nové-Josserand by the Boeing Company through a Strategic Research and Development Relationship Agreement CT-BA-GTA-1. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by the National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1053575.