Shock-compression low-temperature ignition and its peculiarity

Abstract

Compression ignition of a stoichiometric iso-octane/oxygen/argon mixture was observed using a shock tube and a rapid-compression machine. Reducing the compression temperature, the activation energy for the shock-compression ignition fell suddenly at the critical temperature the ignition delay exceeded around 1 ms. This peculiarity could be seen in the shock-compression stoichiometric methane ignition with which mixture absolutely no cool-flame low-temperature reactions accompanied. Shock wave diagrams indicated that the ignition was originated not at the end of the tube but to the inside of the tube. It resulted in the smaller activation energies in the lower temperature regions. This phenomenon was not due to the difference of chemical reaction mechanisms. High-speed schlieren observations using another shock tube with visualization windows have allowed us to confirm the peculiarity that the earliest ignition sites were located apart from the tube end and the ignition initiation structure would change depending on the compression temperature.