Numerical and experimental study on flame propagating mechanism of a fuel droplet array

The major goals of the researches in combustion science are to provide predictive and controlling capabilities to enhance combustion technology and fire safety. In other words, the practical motivations for combustion study and application research are, owed to the widespread dependence on combustion processes in modern societies. Furthermore, environmental concerns recently dominate needs of combustion research for the realization of low-emissive, efficient energy generation and utilization. The utilization of microgravity is an exceedingly useful tool for the scientific research for realization of physics and dynamics of combustion phenomena, such as spray combustion. Many experiments have been conducted in order to investigate combustion phenomena without natural convection. Now in addition, numerical simulation becomes useful method for further understanding of combustion phenomena. From the fundamental viewpoints, the interactions among fluid dynamics, scalar transport, thermodynamics and chemical kinetics that are characteristic of combustion phenomena have been investigated by above experimental and numerical methods. This paper reports about our efforts on microgravity combustion study. In order to describe the characteristic mode of droplet-to-droplet flame propagation, we conducted the numerical simulations and dropshaft experiments comparing with theoretical prediction models of flame propagation.