INTRODUCTION:

Soot : a black, carbonaceous substance produced during the incomplete comb

of organic substances such as coal, wood, oil, etc.

Soot formation in turbulent flames:

Turbulence and combustion are intimately related
A Complex process: involves complex interactions
among the turbulence, thermochemistry, diffusion,
Nucleation, oxidation and agglomeration processes.
Important in combustion devices such as :industrial furnaces, gas turbines ,
internal combustion engines
Unavailability of an universal theory or model that is applicable to different f
and a wide range of flow conditions
OBJECTIVE:
better understanding of soot formation process in turbulent flames.
Provide a new data base for modelling soot formation in turbulent flames
since limited data base

Method: Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry technique (SPIV)

coupled with Laser Induced Incandescence (LII).
SPIV: measure the instantaneous 3 velocity components whereas LII
provides instantaneous 2D soot distribution.

Figure: SPIV/LII Experimental optical set up

The
Burner
Fuel: mixture of pure ethylene and pure methane

The fuel jet is surrounded by coannular dry air flow of 400 mm

in diameter in order to provide a
homogeneous and controlled coflow oxidizer.

Figure : Burner Schematic

Four fuel mixtures of ethylene and methane have been used

The total flow rate is 10L/min.
Fuel composition

Ethylene
(L/min)

Methane
(L/min)

100E-0M

10

75E-25M

7.5

2.5

50E-50M

30E-70M

100% E- 0 % M

75% E- 25 % M

50% E- 50 % M

30% E- 70 % M

The higher the ethylene mole fraction is, the brightest

the flame is.
Soot Volume fraction increases with the ethylene
proportion.

Post Processing of the LII Images:

The first post-processing consists of the subtraction of raw LII
images by the
background flame luminosity as shown in the Fig

(a) The background

flame luminosity (max
intensity about 1100
u.a),

(b) The LII signal + the

background flame
luminosity (max intensity
about 11000 u.a),

(c) resulting image after

post-processing (max
intensity about 10000 u.a)

Figure : Post-processing of LII image (100% ethylene,

100 mm HAB

Figure 6: instantaneous PIV image with corresponding

velocity field of SCMOS camera 1(upper) and camera 2
(bottom) for 50 mm HAB in the 50E-50M flame

SPIV vectors were obtained by stereo reconstruction using

Davis 8 software.

Figure : Resulting instantaneous SPIV

image at 50 mm HAB in the 50E-50M
flame. (a) Vector length in y direction,
(b) Magnitude of the planar velocity

Figure: Instantaneous LII image

recorded simultaneously with the
previous SPIV image at 50 mm HAB
in the 50E-50M flame

Further Processing of the LII images: (Thresholding,

Dilation and Erosion,
Labeling and Measuring Objects in the binary Image)

Mean Components

Figure:
u_mean

Figure: v_mean

Figure: w_mean

Figure: c_mean

Correlations

Figure: cc

Figure: cu

Figure: cv

Figure: cw

Turbulent Stresses

Figure: uu

Figure: vv

Figure: uv

Figure: vw

Figure: uw

Figure: ww

Figure: Instantaneous Velocity

field with missing particles due
to vaporization of the seeding
(olive oil) particles

Figure: Instantaneous
Velocity Field with
interpolated missing data

Figure: Vorticity Field

Figure: Kinetic Energy

Figure: RMS of a series of 150

fields

CONCLUSION:
SPIV technique has been combined with instantaneous LII
measurements in turbulent sooting flames.
Statistical investigation to determine the correlation
between soot formation areas and the turbulent flow in the
different flames.
Further works will be focused on the simplification of the
optical set-up in view of industrial applications and on the
acquisition of a detailed database SPIV/LII in the newdesigned burner.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The work is supported by the AFDAR project (Advanced Flow
Diagnostics for Aeronautical Research) funded by the European
Communitys Seventh Framework programme.