Analysis of flame surface density measurements in turbulent premixed combustion

In premixed turbulent combustion, reaction rates can be estimated from the flame surface density. This parameter, which measures the mean flame surface area available per unit volume, may be obtained from algebraic expressions or by solving a transport equation. In this study, detailed measurements were performed on a Bunsen-type burner fed with methane/air mixtures in order to determine the local flame surface density experimentally. This burner, located in a high-pressure combustion chamber, allows investigation of turbulent premixed flames under various flow, mixture, and pressure conditions. In the present work, equivalence ratio was varied from 0.6 to 0.8 and pressure from 0.1 to 0.9 MPa. Flame front visualizations by Mie scattering laser tomography are used to obtain experimental data on the instantaneous flame front dynamics. The exact equation given by Pope is used to obtain flame surface density maps for different flame conditions. Some assumptions are made in order to access three-dimensional information from our two-dimensional experiments. Two different methodologies are proposed and tested in term of global mass balance (what enters compared to what is burned). The detailed experimental flame surface data provided for the first time in this work should progressively allow improvement of turbulent premixed flame modeling approaches.