An experimental and kinetic modeling study on the low-temperature oxidation, ignition delay time, and laminar flame speed of a surrogate fuel for RP-3 kerosene

Abstract The low-temperature oxidation (under the conditions of the initial pressure of 0.1 MPa, equivalence ratio of 0.5 and 1.0, temperature range of 550–1100 K), ignition delay times (under the conditions of the equivalence ratio of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, initial pressure of 0.1, 0.3 MPa, temperature range of 1000–1700 K) and laminar flame speeds (under the conditions of the initial temperature of 400, 420, 450, 480 K, equivalence ratio of 0.7–1.4 and pressure of 0.1, 0.3 MPa) of RP-3 kerosene and its surrogate fuel (including 14% n-decane/10% n-dodecane/30% isohexadecane/36% methylcyclohexane/10% toluene, by mole fraction) were experimental tested in the jet-stirred reactor, shock tube, and constant volume combustion bomb, respectively. The results show that the low-temperature oxidation, ignition delay times, and laminar flame speeds of the surrogate fuel are in good agreement with those of RP-3 kerosene. Meanwhile, through the reaction class-based global sensitivity analysis, decoupling methodology, and multi-objective genetic algorithm, the reduced reaction mechanism of the surrogate fuel (including 181 species and 872 reactions) was established. The results show that this reduced reaction mechanism can well predict the low-temperature oxidation, ignition delay times, and laminar flame speeds of RP-3 kerosene and the surrogate fuel.