High Speed Laser Tomography Analysis of Flame Propagation in a Simulated Internal Combustion Engine - Applications to Nonuniform Mixture

Flame propagation has been studied in a simulated engine in presence of turbulence and nonhomogeneity of mixing. Experiment was conducted in a constant volume chamber where turbulence was generated by the motion of a piston. High speed laser tomography was used to study evolution of the flame growth in term of flame surface and flame length. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) associated to cross-correlation algorithm was used to provide evolution of a two dimensional velocity vectors map in the engine in presence of flame propagation. Laser tomography by means of quantitative Mie diffusion was applied to study the mean and the RMS-fluctuations of the nonhomogeneous mixture created in the chamber. Measurements have been performed with and without turbulence (the mixing being homogeneous or not) for statistical sets of digitized images. First results are presented here.