Effect of fuel injection location on a plasma jet assisted combustion with a backward-facing step

Non-reacting and reacting experiments on the ignition by a plasma jet (PJ) torch were performed to understand the correlation between fuel injection location and combustion characteristics in unheated Mach 2 airflow. Fuel was injected through three sonic injectors in the recirculation region behind a backward-facing step: a parallel injector at 2 mm from the bottom wall and two normal injectors at 2 and 9 mm from the step wall. In order to mitigate the combustion pressure interaction with nozzle, an isolator was installed between the nozzle and combustor. The combustion performance of normal injection was little affected by the difference of fuel injection locations. Moreover, normally injected fuel was escaped not to be held in the recirculation region despite of low fuel injection rates. This led to lower combustion performance relative to the parallel injection which provided fuel not to leave the recirculation region. In this case, the role of the recirculation region was to fully hold fuel, and the PJ torch provided hot gases as a heat source and acted as a flame-holder to ignite fuel–air mixtures. In a low temperature inflow condition, combustible regions were constrained around the bottom wall where embedded with the PJ torch. When thermal choking occurred in the combustor, it induced shock train both in the combustor and isolator. Under this unstable condition, the combustion performance of the normal injection was lower than that of the parallel injection. This is because the normal injection led most fuel into low temperature incoming air-stream.