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In the present study, a numerical simulation of flame propagation and extinction in a micro combustor that is subject to excessive heat loss to the wall, particularly during flame propagation, is described. Heat loss to the wall was empirically modeled from measurement data on a similarly configured micro combustor. A PISO based numerical scheme was used for differencing the conservation equations. An H2-air reaction mechanism involving 16 species and 10 reaction steps was used to approximate the combustion process. A cylindrical computation domain was used to simulate the experiments. The combustor volume has a small height to radius ratio and an axial gradient of properties can be significant. In the present study, however, axial gradients were ignored, leaving radius as the only spatial coordinate. Instead of evaluating heat transfer from the temperature gradient near the wall surface, an empirical bulk heat transfer coefficient was used to approximate heat loss to the wall. A comparison of the computa...

A numerical simulation of flame propagation in a micro combustor was carried out. Combustor has a sub -millimeter depth cylindrical internal volume and axisymmetric one-dimensional was used to simplify the geometry. Semi-empirical heat transfer model was used to account for the heat loss to the walls during the flame propagation. A detailed chemical kinetics model of with 10 species and 16 reaction steps was used to calculate the combustion. An operator-splitting PISO scheme that is non-iterative, time-dependent, and implicit was used to solve the system of transport equations. The computation was validated for adiabatic flame propagation and showed good agreement with existing results of adiabatic flame propagation. A full simulation including the heat loss model was carried out and results were compared with measurements made at corresponding test conditions. The heat loss that adds its significance at smaller value of combust or height obviously affected the flame propagation speed as final temperature of the burnt gas inside the combustor. Also, the distribution of gas properties such as temperature and species concentration showed wide variation inside the combustor, which affected the evaluation of total work available of the gases.

As the size of a combustor decreases to a MEMS scale, heat loss increases and becomes a dominant effect on the performance of the devices. Existing models, however, are not adequate to predict the heat transfer and combustion processes in such small scales. In the present study, a semi-empirical model to calculate heat loss from a micro combustor is described. The model derives heat transfer coefficients that best fits the heat loss characteristics of a micro combustor that is represented by transient pressure record after combustion is completed. From conservation of energy equation applied to the burned gas inside the combustor, a relationship between pressure and heat transfer is reduced. Two models for heat transfer coefficients were tested; a constant and first order polynomial of temperature with its coefficients determined from fitting with measurements. The model was tested on a problem of cooling process of burnt gas in a micro combustor and comparison with measurements showed good agreements. The heat transfer coefficients were used for combustion calculation in a micro vessel. The results showed the dependence of flame speed on the scale of the chamber through enhanced heat loss.