Development of a fan-stirred constant volume combustion chamber and turbulence measurement with PIV

A fan-stirred combustion chamber is developed for spherically expanding flames, with P and T up to 10 bar and 473 K, respectively. Turbulence characteristics are estimated using particle image velocimetry (PIV) at different initial pressures (P = 0.5–5 bar), fan frequencies (ω = 0–2000 r/min), and impeller diameters (D = 100 and 114 mm). The flame propagation of methanol/air is investigated at different turbulence intensities (u′ =0–1.77 m/s) and equivalence ratios (ϕ = 0.7–1.5). The results show that u′ is independent of P and proportional to ω, which can be up to 3.5 m/s at 2000 r/min. L_T is independent of P and performs a power regression with ω approximately. The turbulent field is homogeneous and isotropic in the central region of the chamber while the inertial subrange of spatial energy spectrum is more collapsed to −5/3 law at a high Re_T. Compared to laminar expanding flames, the morphology of turbulent expanding flames is wrinkled and the wrinkles will be finer with the growth of turbulence intensity, consistent with the decline of the Taylor scale and the Kolmogorov scale. The determined S_L in the present study is in good agreement with that of previous literature. The S_L and S_T of methanol/air have a non-monotonic trend with ϕ while peak S_T is shifted to the richer side compared to S_L. This indicates that the newly built turbulent combustion chamber is reliable for further experimental study.