Review and Analysis of Bluff Body Flame Stabilization Data

This paper compiles and analyzes bluff body stabilized flame blowoff data from the literature. Many of these studies contain semi-empirical blowoff correlations that are, in essence, Damko¨hler number correlations of their data. This paper re-analyzes these data, utilizing various Damko¨hler number correlations based upon detailed kinetic modeling for determining chemical time scales. While the results from this compilation are similar to that deduced from many earlier studies, it demonstrates that a rather comprehensive data set taken over a large range of conditions can be correlated from “first-principles” based calculations that do not rely on empirical fits or adjustable constants (e.g., global activation energy or pressure exponents). The paper then discusses the implications of these results on understanding of blowoff. Near blowoff flames experience local extinction of the flame sheet, manifested as “holes” that form and convect downstream. However, local extinction is distinct from blowoff — in fact, under certain conditions the flame can apparently persist indefinitely with certain levels of local extinction. We hypothesize that simple Damko¨hler number correlations contain the essential physics describing this first stage of blowoff; i.e., they are correlations for the conditions where local extinction on the flame begins, but do not fundamentally describe the ultimate blowoff condition itself. However, such correlations are reasonably successful in correlating blowoff limits because the ultimate blowoff event appears to be correlated to some extent to the onset of this first stage.