Heat and Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-018-2433-0

ORIGINAL

Effect of injector spacing in the light-around ignition efficiency

and mechanisms in a linear swirled spray burner
Javier Marrero-Santiago1 · Antoine Verdier1 · Alexis Vandel1 · Gilles Cabot1 · Abdelkrim Mourad Boukhalfa1 ·
Bruno Renou1

Received: 27 March 2018 / Accepted: 18 July 2018 / Published online: 1 August 2018
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
The ignition behaviour of a linear swirled spray burner is investigated experimentally. The study focuses on the mechanism
of light-around, namely the burner-to-burner propagation, where the effect of injector-to-injector distance on the flame
propagation mechanism is considered. The existence of a switching between two different flame propagation mechanisms
between injectors in the chamber is identified. The radial and arch propagation mechanisms are found in this work for
n-heptane and the underlying causes are explained. High-speed visualisation, high-speed Particle Image Velocimetry (HS-
PIV) and Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence on Toluene (T-PLIF) expose the variables piloting these the flame propagation
mechanisms and the success of light-around. The aerodynamics and the local equivalence ratio of the flow are analysed
for 4 injector-to-injector distances (d) varying from 9 to 18 cm. The modification of d imposes a change in the inner
recirculation zone (I RZ) and in the mixture trajectories between injectors. The mixture formation and, thus, the equivalence
ratio are directly impacted by the aerodynamics. A mixture migration effect in front of the flame front is also identified and
strongly associated to the radial propagation mechanism. The flame propagation speed and its wrinkling factor highlight
more differences between radial and arch propagation modes.

1 Introduction
Forced ignition of turbulent spray flames is a topic of
current research interest and of major importance for
the future of aeronautical gas turbines. Many efforts
are being dedicated to better understand and control
re-ignition in high altitude of lean combustion burner
designs [1]. Severe conditions of atomisation, temperature
and pressure introduce difficulties to the relight of the
combustion chambers. Lean configurations, which are less
pollutant, complicate the ignition process due to lower
flame stability, lower flame temperatures and lower laminar
burning velocities. Spray ignition is a major challenge
for simulation and experiments as it is a very complex
process involving simultaneous multi-physical phenomena
 Bruno Renou
renou@coria.fr
1 INSA Rouen-Normandie, UNIROUEN, CNRS, CORIA,
Normandie University, 76000 Rouen, France
which occur within different time scales and length scales
inside the combustion chamber. Aeronautical ignition can
be divided into four stages, which are thoroughly described
in Mastorakos [2] latest works. Phase 1 involves the
sparking and transition to a reacting flame kernel. During
phase 2, the kernel expands and grows, moving inside the
chamber. After igniting the first injector, the kernel becomes
a long-term stable flame at phase 3. The last stage, phase
4, describes the injector-to-injector propagation or light-
around. In real engines, ignition is controlled by parameters
of very different nature. For instance, atomization, slip
velocity, volatility and turbulent mixing are responsible for
the liquid and gaseous equivalence ratio distribution in the
chamber. Complete ignition has to be achieved as quickly
as possible to avoid fuel accumulation and overpressure in
the chamber and turbine sectors. Previous research works
cover a variety of topics mainly focused on phase 1 and
phase 2. The minimum spark energy for successful ignition
has been studied in the pioneer works of [3, 4]. Other
investigations deal with turbulence effects and ignition
probability [5–7]. The influence of the fuel spray parameters
1872
has also been addressed in [8–11]. Most of these studies
deal with single-injector burners whereas experiments and
simulations on multi-injector chambers are still scarce.
Some investigations have carried a gaseous approach to
phase 4 of ignition in linear-burner systems [12–15] where
the effect of injector-to-injector separation on premixed
flame propagation was examined. Other studies focus on
premixed and non-premixed ignition in annular combustion
chambers [16–18]. Two recent works deal with swirling-
multi-injector spray ignition [19, 20] and associate ignition
delay time to fuel volatility, amongst other results. The
chamber geometry plays a very important role in the light-
around of the engine. The injector-to-injector distance (d) is
a major concern when tackling new chamber configurations
and, for instance, dealing with downsizing strategies. In a
recent work [19], the authors demonstrated that there is
a switching between two ignition mechanisms (radial and
arch) depending on the inter-injector distance d. This was
partially explained by the inter-injector region properties
and the bridges between spray branches that change
with the inter-injector distance. It was also demonstrated
that ignition delay times show different dependencies on
the distance between injectors when switching between
propagation modes. In [20], the injector-to-injector distance
is d = 6.9 cm and high-speed flame images reveal a
radial propagation mechanism. In [15, 16] however, a
value of d = 4.4 cm implied the presence of the arch
propagation mode in a gaseous non-premixed configuration.
Therefore, there is no apparent consensus between the
different recent works concerning flame propagation during
phase 4. Moreover, d is generally expressed in the literature
as an non-dimensional value, d/D, where D represents
the air inlet diameter. Far from improving the comparisons
between different investigations, this makes observations
differ even more from each other, suggesting that it is not
the best practice.
The present investigation deals with the flame propaga-
tion mechanisms and with the dependency of ignition delay
time on d during phase 4, moving a step further and explain-
ing the causes driving this switching in light-around spray
flows. Objectives are focused on the identification of the
main parameters responsible for each propagation mode,
which may give a clue to make the precedent observa-
tions converge. The cold flow is analysed for four values
of d in terms of velocity and equivalence ratio in order to
explain the causes driving the different observed ignition
behaviours. High-speed visualisation of the spontaneous
flame emission enables to identify the flame propagation
mechanisms and ignition delay times. High-speed particle
image velocimetry (HS-PIV) was applied to characterise
the velocity field of the carrier phase and planar laser
induced fluorescence (PLIF) on toluene (as a tracer) was
used to quantify the local equivalence ratio fields. This work
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
provides new insight on aeronautical ignition and light-
around, and it proposes also a suitable database for valida-
tion of numerical models.
2 Experimental methods
The experimental facility and the nominal operating
conditions are detailed below, followed by the description
of the diagnostics employed.
2.1 Burner
Experiments were carried out in the CORIA Linear Swirled
Spray Burner, a linear arrangement of swirling injectors
confined with quartz windows allowing full optical access
(two-phase flow version of the burner used by Barre et al.
[12]). Each injector is composed of a central simplex
pressure swirl atomizer (Danfoss, 1.46 kg/ h, 80 ˚ hollow
cone) and of an annular air co-flow with inner and outer
diameters of 10 and 20 mm, respectively. The radial swirler
in the air duct is composed of 18 rectangular (6 mm × 8
mm) channels inclined at 45 ˚ leading to a Swirl number of
0.76. Air and liquid fuel (n-heptane) mass flow rates were
controlled by thermal and Coriolis mass flow controllers and
set to 6.86 g/s and 0.316 g/s per injector, respectively. This
imposed a lean global equivalence ratio of 0.7 ± 0.01. The
co-flow was preheated to 416 ± 3 K. Figure 1 presents a
front view of the multi-injector facility. Injectors are placed
linearly along a chamber enclosed by a large front window, a
back metallic wall and two lateral small windows. The width
of the chamber is 11 cm whereas its length (L) is variable.
This enables to vary the injector-to-injector distance (d).
An aeronautical spark plug was placed in the metallic wall,
always aligned with the second injector at 23 mm from
the bottom of the chamber. The spark-plug is connected
Fig. 1 Front view of the CORIA Linear Swirled Spray Burner
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
to an external power supply system (Ignition Exciter HE
901 from Vibro-Meter France SA) and the delivered output
energy is estimated to 450 mJ/spark. The inner wall nominal
temperature was 360 K at the triggering of ignition. The
dynamic pressure signal was measured during ignition by
a pressure sensor (Kistler @ 10 kH z) located at the top
right corner of the chamber. During the experiments, four
different values of d were tested: 9, 13, 15 and 18 cm.
For technical reasons, each spacing configuration required
a certain amount of injectors to be used, as specified by
Cordier et al. [13]. The fuel and air mass flows per injector
were imposed and kept constant for all the cases.
2.2 Optical diagnostics
2.2.1 High-speed flame visualisation
High-speed visualization was used to track the flame
propagation during the complete ignition process. A high-
speed camera turning at 20 kHz (Phantom V2512, 1280 ×
800 pixels2 ) recorded the flame spontaneous emission from
the front view with a magnification ratio of 399 μm/pixel
for d = 9 and 13 cm and 526 μm/pixel for d = 15 and 18 cm.
A 532 nm vertical continuous laser sheet (Diode-pumped
solid state laser, 1 W ) illuminated the fuel droplets and the
Mie scattering signal was collected by the same camera.
2.2.2 High-speed particle image velocimetry (HS-PIV)
It is necessary to characterise in detail and analyse the
instantaneous and mean air velocity fields in order to
reveal the effects of injector-to-injector spacing on the
aerodynamics of the flow and, thus, on ignition. For this
purpose, the carrier phase was seeded far upstream with
2 μm silicon oil particles. Particle image velocimetry was
applied on the airflow without spray presence at a 5 kH z
repetition rate for all distances. A magnification factor of
0.129 mm/pixel was used for d = 9, 13 and 15 cm while
d = 18 cm required 0.147 mm/pixel. A double cavity
527 nm Nd:YLF laser (Darwin Dual Quantronix) and a
Phantom V2512 high-speed camera were used. The time
between laser pulses was set to 40 μs enabling to correctly
capture the wide range of velocities present in the flow
but prioritizing the inter-injector region. The confinement
windows increased the complexity of the experiments
enabling a short acquisition time before becoming dirty.
For each value of d, 5000 raw single images were selected
to calculate 2500 instantaneous vector fields. Raw images
were normalised by their corresponding mean images
to reduce any spatial energy variations and background
scattering. The 1280 × 800 pixels2 images were processed
with Dynamic Studio from DANTEC using the Adaptive
PIV calculation, with initial and final interrogation windows
1873
of 128 × 128 and 32 × 32 pixels2 , 50% of overlap and a
maximum iteration number of 10, yielding 79 × 49 vector
fields. The signal-to-noise ratio acceptance was set over
1.5 and range and median validation were applied. Post-
processing with Matlab enabled to further analyse the data.
Paired PIV images were also recorded with seeding and with
spray presence under the propagation of the flame during
ignition. They were post-processed through the same PIV
algorithms.
2.2.3 Planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) on Toluene
To evaluate the local gaseous equivalence ratio in the
chamber, Toluene-PLIF measurements were performed.
Since n-heptane is not a fluorescent molecule, a tracer
had to be added to the fuel. For this purpose, Toluene
was selected because it presents similar physical properties,
such as a boiling point (383.7 K) close to that of n-
heptane (371.6 K). Its photophysical properties are also
well known and characterized [21, 22]. The hypothesis
of similar diffusion and therefore, similar evaporation rate
were made. Toluene was excited by a laser sheet at 266 nm
by a quadrupled Nd-YAG laser at a repetition rate of 10
H z. The fluorescence light was collected by an intensified
camera (EmICCD PIMAX 4) equipped with two 275 nm
high-pass filters (ZUL275 × 1 mm) and a 280 nm high-
pass filter (WG280 × 2 mm), in order to remove the Mie
scattering signal from droplets. The tracer was mixed at
2% in volume with the n-heptane in the reservoir to ensure
a compromise between a good signal to noise ratio for
the gaseous fluorescence signal and the camera saturation
imposed by the liquid phase. Toluene is very sensitive to
O2 collisional quenching and its fluorescence signal (Sf )
varies with temperature [21]. For this reason, a preliminary
study of the dependence of Sf on temperature variations
(T ) around the air co-flow conditions was performed
by varying the amount of O2 : N2 ratio injected in the
chamber for two co-flowing identical vapour jets at different
inlet temperatures. It was found that for our nominal gas
temperature (T = 416 ± 3 K) a configuration with 1% O2
and 99% N2 molar nullifies the dependence of Sf on T
for T ≤ 32 K. This value of T is representative to
the expected temperature variation within the combustion
chamber induced by the thermal boundary layer and by
fuel droplet evaporation. This agrees with a previous study
performed by [23]. Therefore, the co-flow inlet conditions
for this experiment were modified accordingly in order to
carry the PLIF experiments and find the molar concentration
of fuel. In this way, Sf only depends on the molar
concentration of toluene and, for each injector-to-injector
distance, making the hypothesis that the fuel evaporates at
the same rate under the new configuration, it will provide
useful information on the fuel vapour repartition (molar
1874
fraction). The gaseous equivalence ratio was then calculated
using this molar fraction and taking the co-flow as if
it was pure air. Raw images were noise-corrected and
normalized by a laser sheet mean image, recorded at the
top part of the burner (for each d) where droplets are no
longer present and the mixture is homogeneous. This top
image gives a reference of the global equivalence ratio and,
thus, allows performing the calculation of the fuel mixture
fraction and of the equivalence ratio in the corrected images.
This was performed for the four studied injector-to-injector
configurations (d = 9, 13, 15 and 18 cm). The magnification
factor was kept constant so as to visualise two half-injectors
and the inter-injector region at d = 18 cm and, hence,
two lateral half-injectors plus a central complete injector
and two inter-injector regions (IIRs) for d = 9 cm. PLIF
has been widely applied before and some investigations
have been performed in two-phase flows, the majority of
which dealt with large isolated droplets or droplet trains,
such as Mercier et al. [24]. These propose, for instance,
droplet detection based on signal intensities and gradients
in order to separate the vapour and liquid phases. However,
this technique presents some non-negligible limitations in
presence of heterogeneous multi-disperse sprays. Indeed,
droplets smaller than the field resolved by one camera pixel
are not targeted by these detection techniques. In addition,
each pixel integrates the fluorescence signal within the
entire laser sheet thickness (∼ 150 μm), where several
droplets can exist (depending on local droplet size and
concentration). These issues contribute to a bias in the
quantification of the fuel vapour molar fraction. Although
fluorescence of the tracer molecules in the liquid state is
counterbalanced by laser absorption in the droplets, the
liquid-vapour separation by post-processing is not possible
in the sub-pixel range and, hence, dense spray regions
cannot yield quantitative information on the vapour phase.
Nonetheless, the information collected at dense locations
Fig. 2 Ignition sequence for n-heptane and d = 9 cm. High-speed spontaneous flame emission images
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
is very useful because it qualitatively characterises the fuel
content in the local mixture. This is the case of the spray
branches. On the other hand, the inter-injector region and
the inner recirculation zone are free of this effect and enable
a quantitative analysis. In addition, these droplets have long
residence times in the chamber under strong evaporation
conditions, so they are smaller than those in the spray
branches, thus, contributing even less to a potential bias.
Droplets resolved by the system were detected by signal
level and gradient thresholds.
3 Results
This section is divided into 3 subsections containing the
observations and interpretations of the data extracted via
the different optical diagnostics. High-speed recording
of spontaneous flame emission enables to analyse its
propagation and path between injectors, as well as the
total ignition delay time. The results of the air velocity
measurements are presented in second place and the
equivalence ratio data comes in third place.
3.1 Flame propagation mechanisms
The distance between neighbouring injectors was varied
from d = 9 cm to 18 cm and ignition tests were performed.
The flame propagation is revealed by the high-speed images
and different mechanisms are identified. To illustrate this,
Figs. 2 and 3 show two ignition sequences for different
injector-to-injector distances: 9 and 18 cm respectively. For
the sake of conciseness, only 9 negative images are shown
on each figure. The d = 9 cm configuration used 5 injectors
while only 3 injectors were used for d = 18 cm due to space
issues. The fuel sprays issuing from each injector can be
observed in both sequences thanks to the Mie scattering of
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885 1875

Fig. 3 Ignition sequence for n-heptane and d = 18 cm. High-speed spontaneous flame emission images

a laser sheet (entering the burner from the right) on the fuel
droplets. Injectors in Fig. 2 are denoted from A to E on
the first image. The image sequence starts at 6 ms after the
spark triggering and time between images is t = 4.5 ms.
The spark is triggered at the wall at injector B. On the first
image a growing flame kernel can be appreciated on the
right branch of B. This kernel evolves and propagates under
time and length scales characteristic of ignition P hase2. By
24 ms, injector B is ignited completely. In this particular
example, B and C are lighted practically simultaneously.
The flame then propagates (P hase4) under a turbulent flow
and showing highly wrinkled reaction fronts. Arrows in
Fig. 2 indicate that flame propagation takes place in all the
volume in a radial way, with leading fronts sweeping the

Fig. 4 Mean velocity fields for the four injector-to-injector distances. Colours represent the axial velocity component
1876
inter-injector regions vigorously. The mean total ignition
delay time calculated from 20 independent ignition trials at
d = 9 cm yields 50 ms.
Injectors in Fig. 3 are named F , G and H and time
between images is 10.5 ms in this sequence. Droplets of
injector F are less visible due to attenuation of the laser
intensity caused by divergence of the sheet and by the
presence of droplets from the other injectors. Ignition is
triggered at injector G and a compact flame kernel can
be observed on top of it, in the centre of the chamber.
The flame kernel then evolves and grows systematically
in the region attributed to injector G, which appears to be
completely ignited at 27 ms showing a similar timing that
the previous case (d = 9 cm). In the following stage, the
flame does not evolve along the lower part of the chamber
since any lateral fronts emerging at low axial stations are
either quickly extinguished or cannot propagate. The flame
then propagates with a low velocity at the top part of the
burner aided by the thermal expansion of the burnt gases.
At 58.5 ms injectors G and H appear connected by a flame
branch in an arched shape; the same happens at 69 m for
injector F . The mean total ignition delay time extracted
from the 20 ignition tests at d = 18 cm is 110 ms.
Two different propagation mechanisms have been iden-
tified from these observations: the radial mechanism for
Fig. 5 Some instantaneous velocity fields for the four injector-to-injector distances. Colours represent the axial velocity component
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
short inter-injector distances (d = 9 and 13 cm) and the arch
mechanism for large distances (d = 15 and 18 cm). These
two mechanisms have been also previously identified in the
same burner but using a non-premixed configuration [12,
13] where the influence of the inter-injector distance on the
velocity field and on the equivalence ratio was evaluated,
and injectors were said to be connected for dcrit < 16 cm
and independent for dcrit > 16 cm. This critical dcrit value
is close to the one in the present study (13 < dcrit <
15 cm) but remains slightly higher. Comparing the equiva-
lence ratio, in [12] it was observed to be very homogeneous
even close to the injectors and to vary in the injector region,
however, local φ varies much more intensely in the present
study. This is explained by the presence of fuel droplets,
which follow different trajectories inside the chamber and
deposit fuel vapour at regions that are inaccessible to a
gaseous fuel injection. High-speed images from MICCA-
Spray burner by Prieur et al. [20] also reveal the presence
of the radial propagation mechanism present for an injector-
to-injector distance of 6 cm. These observations prove the
existence of a switching phenomenon between two different
flame trajectories but until now there are no investiga-
tions in spray flows of the reasons behind this behaviour.
The following sections provide new information on the air
velocity fields and the equivalence ratio fields existing in
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
the space between the injectors for the four studied values
of d.
3.2 Effect of the aerodynamics
The dynamics of the carrier phase are modified when
varying the distance between neighbouring injectors and
this must be investigated in order to explain the different
ignition mechanisms observed. For this purpose, HS-PIV
was applied on the air co-flow without spray presence. It
has been proven in a KIAI single-injector chamber under
similar flow conditions that the impact of fuel droplets
(issuing from this precise simplex atomiser) on the airflow
is negligible, especially for axial stations higher than 20 mm
[25]. Therefore, the separate study of the airflow velocity
is justified. Figure 4 presents the mean air velocity fields
Fig. 6 Mean and standard deviation fields of the equivalence ratio for each of the four injector-to-injector distances. Dashed-line boxes indicate
regions used for mean calculations of φ at the I I Rs and I RZs
1877
for d = 9, 13, 15 and 18 cm. The colour map describes the
axial (vertical) component of the velocity and blue colours
indicate negative velocities. The field of view starts at z ∼
25 mm above the injection for d = 9, 13 and 15, and at z = 20
mm for d = 18 cm, due to a different image magnification
factor for this last one. Figure 4 reveals outstanding
differences between the different configurations. At d = 9
cm, the swirling air jets open very quickly to touch the
neighbouring jets at z ∼ 65 mm and leaving a large space
for the inner recirculation zone (I RZ). Negative velocities
in the I RZ reach regions of z ≤ 20 mm. The inter-injector
region (I I R) is characterised by positive velocities of low
magnitude (∼ 2 m/s). The following configuration (d =
13 cm) reveals longer main jet zones that penetrate further
than the latter, keeping high peak velocities. Neighbouring
jets seem to merge just above the field of view, at z ∼
1878 Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885

Fig. 7 Local mean gaseous equivalence ratio at the I I R and in the I RZ for the four injector-to-injector distances. Error bars indicate the
measurement inaccuracy caused by possible slight variations in laser energy and in mass flows

Fig. 8 Two instantaneous equivalence ratio fields for each of the four injector-to-injector distances
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
120 mm. The IRZ appears displaced upwards with the
stagnation point shifted to z ∼ 85 mm . The space between
injectors shows negative velocities which bring mixture
from the top of the jet branches. Provided that the spray
branches nearly touch each other, a stagnation point must
exist at r ∼ 60 mm , z ∼ 110 mm, implying that the
descending flow must be charged in fuel due to interaction
with droplets. The long distances will be now analysed
together. In mean terms, there are no indications of a strong
I RZ. Extrapolation from short injector-to-injector distances
suggests that the I RZs have moved upwards downstream
and are less intense. The main air jets show a straight profile
that does not open at high axial stations, oppositely to the
previous configurations. This is supported by the presence
of two counter-rotating vortices, one separating each air jet
branch from the descending flow. These vortices are present
at d = 13 cm fairly close to the tip of the jets where the
merging takes place, whereas for d = 15 and 18 cm, these
two vortices are too far from one another to induce such
jet opening and, thus, prevent neighbouring air jets from
establishing a solid connection. Inevitably, this effect will
carry mixture from the top part of the burner into the inter-
injector zone avoiding any contact with fuel droplets from
spray branches.
The mean behaviour of the flow is very useful to under-
stand the switching mechanism between flame propaga-
tion modes considering the connection or disconnection of
neighbouring swirling air jets. The analysis of the instan-
taneous velocity fields gives further information that can
reveal interesting aspects of the interaction between injec-
tors. Figure 5 illustrates four instantaneous velocity fields
coloured by the axial component, one for each d. Injectors
show again a strong and large I RZ for d = 9 cm, the shape
of which is submitted to the flow fluctuations. Here, the
inter injector regions show some negative velocities at cer-
tain points depending on the jet dynamics. Air jet branches
appear connected to their neighbours and disconnected from
their opposite branches within the same injector. For d =
Fig. 9 Flammability factor
maps for each of the four
injector-to-injector distances
1879
13 cm one of the jet branches shows a wide opening with a
large I RZ (r = 0 mm) while its neighbour branch (r = 120
mm) penetrates the flow vertically. Indeed, for this injector
(placed at r = 130 mm) both branches are closed and do
not possess an I RZ at this precise moment. The jet dynam-
ics are governed by many parameters and have been studied
deeper by Kao et al. [26]. Again, jets for d = 15 and 18
cm show very vertical and penetrating trajectories although
eventually some I RZs can reappear due to fluctuations of
the flow. Jets are totally independent from their neighbours
and the negative velocities (dark blue zones) occupy a large
part of the region between injectors.
Aerodynamically, we could distinguish d = 9 cm from
the other configurations provided that axial velocities in the
inter-injector region (I I R) are generally positive here and
negative for the other values of d. Under this scope, d =
13 cm should eventually exhibit an arch-type propagation
mode, but actually it does not. A possible explanation for
this is the spray opening, which is 80 ˚ (40 ˚ from the axial
line for each spray branch) independently of the injector-
to-injector distance. This brings large inertial droplets into
the top part of the inter-injector region enriching it in fuel
vapour and enabling a radial flame propagation mechanism
to take place at d = 13 cm. The equivalence ratio distribution
is studied in the next section and helps to further understand
the nature of the region between injectors and of flame
propagation.
3.3 Effect of gaseous equivalence ratio and droplets
The Toluene-PLIF images show the repartition of the
mixture fraction locally in the chamber. The fluorescence
signal depends on the fuel molar fraction and the local
gaseous equivalence ratio can be, therefore, calculated.
The spray branches contain liquid fuel and, in order to
separate the liquid and gaseous phases, the droplets were
filtered with a level and a gradient threshold. Due to high
liquid concentration, the quantitative characterisation of the
1880 Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885

equivalence ratio is more difficult in the spray branches.
Figure 6 presents the mean equivalence ratio and the
standard deviation for the four different injector-to-injector
configurations. On the images, a cover can be observed at
the spray cores, immediately after the injectors. This was
added to the system so as not so saturate the intensifier in
the dense-spray region. The mean maps reveal an interesting
evolution of local in the I I Rs and in the I RZs when
changing values of d. For d = 9 cm, the I I R shows higher
values (around 0.73) than the I RZ (around 0.69). For d
= 13 cm, values in the I I R and the I RZ are very close,
while for d = 15 and 18 cm the tendency is reversed: the
local equivalence ratio decreases more and more in the
region between injectors and the I RZ presents increasing
values of φ, higher than those observed in the I I R. Figure 7
illustrates the evolution of local gaseous in the IIRs and
IRZs against d, which has been just described. Boxes in
Fig. 6 indicate the regions from which local spatially-
averaged values of were extracted to elaborate Fig. 7. This
behaviour is intimately related to the velocity field of the
flow and the previous analysis on the existence or absence
of the I RZs. In configurations where the I RZ has a strong

d = 9cm d = 18cm
0.0 ms 0.0 ms
120

100
100

80 80
z (mm)
z (mm)

40 60

40
20

20
0 50 100 150 0 50 100 150
r(mm) r(mm)

11.8 ms 8.4 ms
120

100
100

80 80
z (mm)
z (mm)

40 60

40
20

20
0 50 100 r(mm) 150 0 50 100 150
r(mm)
15.8 ms 22.8 ms
120

100
100

80 80
z (mm)
z (mm)

40 60

40
20

20
0 50 100 150 0 50 100 150
r(mm) r(mm)

U: -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 (ms-1)
Fig. 10 Instantaneous fresh gases velocity fields during flame propagation. Left: d = 9 cm; right: d = 18 cm. The radial component of the velocity
is represented by the colour map and the burnt gases are coloured in black
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885 1881

presence, such as d = 9 cm, is lower in the I RZ because

mixture from the top of the chamber is introduced into this
zone, as well as fresh air, and large fuel droplets cannot
follow such trajectories. The standard deviation shows low
variations in the I I Rs and I RZs, and high variations in the
spray branches.
It is also interesting to investigate the instantaneous
equivalence ratio fields, which are shown in Fig. 8. Here,
two independent images are shown for each d. Black-
coloured pixels represent the fuel droplets that were
detected in the post-processing applying level and gradient
thresholds. The detected droplets were not taken into
account for the calculation of the mean fields. In Fig. 8,
at d = 9 cm, a well-premixed homogeneous inter-injector
region is observed while the I RZ shows more variations. Fig. 11 Mean flame propagation speed extracted from the top leading
edge of the isothermal line in the tomographic images for PIV
For d = 13 cm, more mixture inhomogeneities can be
observed in the I I R, apparently due to the eventual
descending pockets from the top part of the chamber. For
in the I I R whilst the latter reveals a decrease of F in the
long spacing values (d = 15 and 18 cm) high values of
I I R for increasing inter-injector distances, indicating that
φ appear more concentrated in the spray branches and
the mixture becomes statistically less and less flammable.
the I RZs. Here, the I I R becomes very irregular and φ
These two different behaviours match and explain the two
values fluctuate spatially more and more with increasing
identified flame propagation modes.
values of d. Values of φ ≤ 0.55 are more and more
To conclude on this part, authors suggest that the
frequent and describe the lower flammability limit of the
flammability factor or the flammable pathway, or even
mixture.
the non-flammable distance between adjacent injectors
It is very probable that, for long injector-to-injector
would be much more appropriate parameters to compare
distances, there does not exist a complete flammable
different studies on ignition phase 4 than d or d/D. For
pathway directly between the branches of two adjacent
instance, in the non-premixed experiments carried in [15,
injectors. This occurs the majority of the time and, hence,
16], the sawtooth pattern described by Machover et al.
impedes the direct flame propagation. This explains why
(corresponding to an arch mode) is found at injector-to-
the flame cannot propagate at low axial stations between
injector distances of d = 4.4 cm. At such short distances
injectors. When this happens, the flame finds an alternative
[19], the present investigation yields a radial mode. Even for
path from the top forming an arch between neighbouring
such diverging observations, the disagreement is explained
branches. This mechanism takes place thanks to the thermal
via the flammable path or the flammability factor: Fig. 8
expansion of the hot gases, which push the flame fronts onto
depicts non-flammable regions between adjacent injectors
the adjacent sprays from the top. After this, the flame finds
and the flammability factor calculated in [15] reveals the
the neighbour spray branch and descends completing the
arch. For short d distances, the flame propagates actively
through the inter-injector region because the equivalence
ratio is high enough and the reactants are usually premixed.
In addition, the effect of an increased presence of fuel
droplets in the I I R enhances the existence of punctual
rich mixtures, which strongly increase laminar flame speeds
and, thus propagation velocity. Figure 9 illustrates the
flammability factor (F ) maps in the region of analysis for
each value of d. The flammability factor is defined as the
probability of encountering a flammable mixture in a given
location and it was first proposed by Birch et al. [27]. It
was calculated by integrating the PDFs of the equivalence
ratio between the lean and rich flammability limits for
each pixel. This figure identifies two different behaviours
Fig. 12 Wrinkling factor reported by the ratio between the flame
of F attributed to short and long d values. The former length extracted from the isothermal line in the tomographic images
shows homogeneous an always flammable mixtures (F =1) and the shortest distance between the top and bottom leading edges
1882
exact same situation in the IIR. This alternative analysis
makes observations converge.
3.4 Effect of mixture migration
During the flame propagation, the thermal expansion of the
burnt gases induces a velocity on the fresh mixture and
droplets in front of the flame brush. This has been observed
in gaseous configuration by [28] and in two-phase flows by
[29]. In this work, tomographic images of the air seeded
with silicon oil droplets and fuel droplets during the passage
of the flame supply very important exploitable information.
Indeed, during the PIV experimental campaign, high-speed
image pairs were recorded in this configuration. The
flame front evaporates quasi-instantly the seeding droplets,
hence describing an isothermal contour line representative
of the flame front position (or close) and shape. PIV
cross-correlation calculations performed on the fresh side
provide instantaneous velocity fields weighted by the
luminosity of the droplets meaning that, depending on the
fuel droplet concentration and size, the resultant vectors
describe a behaviour between the motion of the liquid and
the gas phase. Figure 10 illustrates a sequence of three
Fig. 13 Top: Non-reacting flow
for small injector-to-injector
distances. Bottom: Sketch of the
behaviour of the flame
propagation and of the igniting
flow for small injector-to-
injector distances: the radial
propagation mechanism
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
instantaneous velocity fields for d =9 cm (left) and for d
= 18 cm (right), coloured by the radial velocity. The first
velocity field shows a non-reacting flow, just as the one
described in Figs. 4 and 5. When the flame approaches the
flow (t = 11.8 ms), entering from the left, the fresh mixture
accelerates towards the right-hand-side with peak velocities
over 5 m/s in the case of d = 9 cm. The last field at d
= 9 cm (t = 15.8 ms) reveals that all the fresh mixture
is strongly affected and a transport effect takes place,
enhancing mixing and possibly making any unfavourable
regions in terms of φ disappear. The case at d = 18 cm
reveals a suppression of the blue colours meaning that there
is a relative acceleration of the flow in front of the flame, but
the effect here is not strong enough to induce a significant
migration of rich mixture towards lean regions. The d = 13
cm configuration yields a very similar behaviour to d = 9
cm. For d = 15 cm, a flow acceleration can be observed,
but only on the top part of the visualization window,
and it is less violent than for shorter injector-to-injector
distances. Using a minimum filtering, a level threshold
and a posterior 2D gradient calculation, the flame contour
was extracted from the raw images and the leading edges
were identified at the top and bottom of the investigation
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
window, so as to track the flame front position and
dynamics.
Figure 11 describes the evolution of the mean velocity
of the top leading edge during the observation of the
propagation of the flame for the different tested injector-to-
injector distances. Again, a break of slope occurs between
short and long d distances, with maximum velocities quasi-
independent from d for d = 9 and d = 13 cm. This same
trend and values were extracted from high-speed image
visualisation of the spontaneous flame emission in [19].
The wrinkling factor of the flame is also a very important
parameter that explains the boost of the burning velocity
from a laminar to a turbulent flame. In this work, the
wrinkling factor is defined as the ratio between the length of
the detected flame front and the straight length between the
top and bottom flame leading edges. Figure 12 illustrates
how flames at d = 15 and d = 18 cm are generally
less wrinkled than flames in shorter injector-to-injector
configurations. Moreover, d = 9 and d = 15 cm show
Fig. 14 Top: Non-reacting flow for long injector-to-injector distances. Bottom: Sketch of the behaviour of the flame propagation and of the
igniting flow for long injector-to-injector distances: the arch propagation mechanism
1883
each an outstanding peak in the wrinkling factor due to 3D
effects that make a second flame branch appear through an
azimuthal trajectory burning preferentially the right branch
(rich mixture) of the fuel spray. This effect can be clearly
observed in Fig. 10 for d = 9 cm at t = 15.8 ms (bottom
left). Initial elevated wrinkling factor values for d = 15 and
d = 18 cm are related to the initial development of the
flame with a right and a left-hand-side propagation fronts,
until the left front exits the images. The increased wrinkling
for small injector-to-injector distances partly explains the
faster propagation velocity in these cases. Signals in Fig. 12
cannot be compared to each other in timing terms because
they are not synchronised with any common event.
Finally, two sketches are proposed to summarise the
main conclusions extracted from previous results. Figure 13
describes the behaviour of the non-reacting flow for short
injector-to-injector distances and the flame propagation
in such conditions and indicating the specificities of the
radial propagation mechanism. Figure 14 summarises the
1884
non-reactive flow properties under long injector-to-injector
configurations. The flame propagation following the arch
mechanism is also detailed as well as the properties of the
igniting flow.
4 Conclusion
The effect of the distance between injectors in a chamber
on the flame propagation has been explained. High-speed
images of the spontaneous emission of the flame enabled
to identify a switching between the radial and the arch
mechanisms for igniting n-heptane spray flows. This is
consistent with previous gaseous studies but the underlying
reasons of this bi-modality have been exposed for spray
injectors. High-speed PIV was performed in the linear
multi-injector chamber to analyse the differences between
the aerodynamics of the flow for four injector-to-injector
spacing values (d = 9, 13, 15 and 18 cm). Toluene-
PLIF was applied to investigate the local distribution
of the equivalence ratio for each configuration. Results
reveal that for short d values, which are responsible for
the radial propagation mechanism, neighbour jet branches
are connected aerodynamically and with a homogeneous
premixed flammable mixture. For distances greater than
d = 13 cm, the aerodynamics isolate each spray from
their neighbours yielding strong differences in terms of φ
between the inter-injector regions and the inner recirculation
zones. Zones between injectors become too lean and,
thus, the flame must find an alternative path to propagate.
This causes the arch mechanism to occur, which presents
much longer ignition delay times. In this work, authors
propose that instead of comparing observations of different
works in terms of the injector-to-injector distances, it
should be done in terms of the flammable pathway,
flammability factor or non-flammable distance between
adjacent injectors. This would make converge the results of
otherwise diverging observations. Moreover, ineffectiveness
of the adimensionalisation of d by the air inlet diameter (D)
has been demonstrated.
Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial
support from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under the
project TIMBER ANR-14-CE23-0009.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author
states that there is no conflict of interest.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Heat Mass Transfer (2019) 55:1871–1885
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