Development of a Skeletal Mechanism for Aviation Kerosene Surrogate Fuel

In this study, a kerosene surrogate model fuel containing 65 mol % n-dodecane, 10% n-tetradecane, and 25% decalin is developed by considering both the physical and chemical characteristics of practical aviation kerosene. By combining the skeletal C0–C4 (carbon number) core mechanism and the reduced large hydrocarbon submechanisms, a high-temperature chemical kinetic mechanism including 50 species and 274 reactions is constructed for the kerosene surrogate model fuel. This relatively small size enables the application of computational fluid dynamics. The performance of the skeletal mechanism is validated by examining various experimental laminar flame speeds of single components, mixtures, and practical kerosene. A sensitivity analysis of the laminar flame speed based on the constructed mechanism shows that the flame propagation of the kerosene is strongly dependent on the C0–C3 kinetics, and it is independent of the fuel-specific species and reactions.