Development of Skeletal Kerosene Mechanisms and Application to Supersonic Combustion

Small-size kerosene mechanisms suitable for supersonic combustion modelings are generally scarce in the literature. This study presents five sets of skeletal kerosene mechanisms, respectively, with 89 species/668 reactions (abbreviated as 89s/668r), 48s/197r, 39s/153r, 28s/92r, and 19s/54r, together with validations in both ideal reactors and a realistic scramjet combustor. As the base level of fidelity validation, the adiabatic flame temperature, accumulated heat release, ignition delay, laminar flame speed, and time evolution behaviors agree reasonably with those predicted by the original detailed mechanism (2185s/8217r) over the initial temperatures ranging from 1200 to 2400 K and equivalence ratios from 0.7 to 1.5, which are the typical combustion conditions in scramjet combustors. The skeletal mechanisms are further validated in a three-dimensional full-combustor modeling employing the improved delayed detached eddy simulation (IDDES) together with the finite-rate partially stirred reactor (PaSR) combustion model. As the second and third levels of fidelity validation, the mean flow fields, combustor efficiencies, intermediate species, and turbulence-chemistry interaction modes predicted by the different skeletal mechanisms are compared and analyzed.