Analysis of Global and Local Hydrodynamic Instabilities on a High-Speed Jet Diffusion Flame via Time-Resolved 3D Measurements

Measurements of 3D flame edge dynamics were made on a high-speed jet diffusion flame to assess the global/local hydrodynamic instability. The flame was generated by issuing high-speed ethylene (U_j = 170 m/s) into a low-speed vitiated hot coflow (U_c = 1.5 m/s), resulting in a hydrodynamic shear layer instability at the interface between combustion products and ambient flow. The measurements used a high-speed camera combined with nine-headed fiber endoscopes to simultaneously collect both the soot radiation and chemiluminescence projections of the flame from nine views, based on which 3D flame edges were obtained via computed tomography at 15 kHz. The measurements clearly capture the time-varying, 3D instantaneous flame edge structures with fine-scale corrugations, enabling the observation of small-scale vortices' evolution. The flame edge deformations induced by those vortices were calculated globally and locally to infer the relationship between global and local flame edge oscillations. Results show that various local oscillation frequencies exist at different locations along the flow direction for such a highly sheared flame. They are dominated by the periodical formation and motion of various localized, small-scale vortices. The local oscillations are much severer than the global oscillation, indicating a self-suppression of the instabilities between these local oscillations. The suppression mechanism is attributed to the constructive and destructive interference behavior of the local disturbances. The global oscillation of the flame edge turns out to be the linear superposition of local oscillations at different locations.