Diode Laser Diagnostics for Gas Species and Soot in Large Fires: LDRD Project Final Report

The thermal hazard posed by a fire to a weapon or other engineered system is a consequence of combined radiation and convection from high-temperature soot and gases. The development of advanced, predictive models of this hazard requires detailed knowledge of the transient chemical structure and soot distributions within real-scale fires. At present, there are no measurements, and hence limited understanding, of transient gaseous species generation and transport in large, fully turbulent fires. As part of a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project to develop such an experimental capability, near-infrared tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) has been identified as the most promising diagnostic technique for making these measurements. In order to develop this capability, significant efforts were applied to choosing optimal species and transitions for detection, to developing an effective multiplexing strategy for several lasers undergoing wavelength modulation spectroscopy with fast laser ramp scans, to developing a methodology for multipassing the TDL beams across a small probe volume, and finally, to designing a water-cooled, fiber-coupled probe for performing these measurements locally within large pool fires. All of these challenges were surmounted during the course of this project, and in the end a preliminary, unique dataset of combined water vapor, acetylene, and soot concentrations was obtained from a 1-m diameter JP-8 pool fire.