Impacts of fuel nonequidiffusivity on premixed flame propagation in channels with open ends

The present study scrutinizes premixed flame dynamics in micro-channels, thereby shedding light on advanced miniature micro-combustion technologies. While equidiffusive burning (when the Lewis number Le = 1) is a conventional approach adopted in numerous theoretical studies, real premixed flames are typically non-equidiffusive (Le ≠ 1), which leads to intriguing effects, such as diffusional-thermal instability. An equidiffusive computational study [V. Akkerman et al., Combust. Flame 145, 675–687 (2006)] reported regular oscillations of premixed flames spreading in channels having nonslip walls and open extremes. Here, this investigation is extended to non-equidiffusive combustion in order to systematically study the impact of the Lewis number on the flame in this geometry. The analysis is performed by means of computational simulations of the reacting flow equations with fully-compressible hydrodynamics and one-step Arrhenius chemical kinetics in channels with adiabatic and isothermal walls. In the adiabatic channels, which are the main case of study, it is found that the flames oscillate at low Lewis numbers, with the oscillation frequency decreasing with Le, while for the Le > 1 flames, a tendency to steady flame propagation is observed. The oscillation parameters also depend on the thermal expansion ratio and the channel width, although the impacts are rather quantitative than qualitative. The analysis is subsequently extended to the isothermal channels. It is shown that the role of heat losses to the walls is important and may potentially dominate over that of the Lewis number. At the same time, the impact of Le on burning in the isothermal channels is qualitatively weaker than that in the adiabatic channels.