A detailed chemical kinetic mechanism has been developed and used to study the oxidation of cyclohexane at both low and high temperatures. Reaction rate constant rules are developed for the low temperature combustion of cyclohexane. These rules can be used for in chemical kinetic mechanisms for other cycloalkanes. Since cyclohexane produces only one type of cyclohexyl radical, much of the low temperature chemistry of cyclohexane is described in terms of one potential energy diagram showing the reaction of cyclohexyl radical + O 2 through 2 five, six and seven membered ring transition states. The direct elimination of cyclohexene and HO 2 from RO 2 is included in the treatment using a modified rate constant of Cavallotti et al.Published and unpublished data from the Lille rapid compression machine, as well as jet-stirred reactor data are used to validate the mechanism. The effect of heat loss is included in the simulations, an improvement on previous studies on cyclohexane. Calculations indicated that the production of 1,2-epoxycyclohexane observed in the experiments can not be simulated based on the current understanding of low temperature chemistry. Possible 'alternative' H-atom isomerisations leading to different products from the parent O 2 QOOH radical were included in the low temperature chemical kinetic mechanism and were found to play a significant role.

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