Past Projects

Hot Surface Ignition in a Quiescent Environment

Hot surface ignition is a process in which flammable liquid comes in contact with a hot surface, evaporates, mixes with the surrounding oxidizer and initiates a combustion reaction. Gas turbine and diesel engines, with their hot manifold surfaces, and numerous fuel lines, are susceptible to undesirable hot surface ignition. Therefore, understanding and preventing the hot surface ignition is critical for of the aviation safety. One of the most important variable determining the probability of successful ignition is the temperature of the hot surface. Hot surface ignition temperatures (HSIT) of aviation fuels are determined in this study. Results showed that hot surface ignition is a probabilistic event. Ignition is transient and initiates at random locations on the hot plate. The randomness is attributed to several parameters viz. variations in the initial drop sizes, vaporization in the transient buoyant plume, surface finish and variations in the surface temperature resulting from previous evaporation events.

Team: Vikrant Goyal, Yerbatyr Tursyn, Jay Gore

Sponsors: Federal Aviation Administration.