Two-dimensional mathematical modeling of flame spread behavior of biodiesel droplet through the percolation approach

Abstract

It is crucial to improve the understanding of biodiesel fuel spray combustion due to the improvement of efficiency and performance in diesel engines. The experiments have been performed on the biodiesel droplet combustion, but the findings have not been fully utilized to elucidate the real phenomenon in the spray combustion. Therefore, the objective of this mathematical modeling is to create a theoretical link between biodiesel droplet combustion experiments and the spray combustion phenomenon of diesel engines. The simulation parameters are taken from flame-spread characteristics of bio-diesel droplets in microgravity experiments. The mathematical modeling used the percolation approach. The mathematical modeling was created based on the biodiesel droplet array experiment in microgravity. It paid attention to flame spread limit distance (S/d0)limit = 7 without droplet interaction. The mean droplet spacing (S/d0)m, lattice size (NL/d0), and also lattice point interval (L/d0) was varied to investigate the behavior of flame spread in large-scale droplet clouds. The simulations show that the occurrence probability of group combustion (OPGC) and flame spread behavior are greatly influenced by mean droplet spacing (S/d0)m.