Simultaneous high-speed 3D flame front detection and tomographic PIV

A technique capable of detecting the instantaneous, time-resolved, 3D flame topography is successfully demonstrated in a lean-premixed swirl flame undergoing flashback. A simultaneous measurement of the volumetric velocity field is possible without the need for additional hardware. Droplets which vaporize in the preheat zone of the flame serve as the marker for the flame front. The droplets are illuminated with a laser and imaged from four different views followed by a tomographic reconstruction to obtain the volumetric particle field. Void regions in the reconstructed particle field, which correspond to regions of burnt gas, are detected with a series of image processing steps. The interface separating the void region from regions filled with particles is defined as the flame surface. The velocity field in the unburnt gas is measured using tomographic PIV. The resulting data include the simultaneous 3D flame front and 3D volumetric velocity field at 5 kHz. The technique is applied to a lean-premixed (phi = 0.8), swirling methane-air flame and validated against simultaneously acquired planar measurements. The mean error associated with the reconstructed 3D flame topography is about 0.4 mm, which is smaller than the flame thickness under the studied conditions. The mean error associated with the volumetric velocity field is about 0.2 m s(-1).