An experimental study of acoustically driven medium-scale pool fires

Abstract

A set of experiments has been conducted on a medium-scale propane fueled pool fire acoustically forced in order to facilitate repeatable measurements defining the flame's transient behavior. The fuel flow was slightly perturbed at the pool fire's natural frequency by a sine waveform driven with a loudspeaker which was installed under the burner. As a result of the perturbation, the puffing behavior of the pool fire and the fire shape were modified. As the magnitude of the sine wave was increased larger perturbations were clearly observed, based on the measurement of the radiative heat flux and image analysis. Temperature and soot volume fractions were measured along the center line and throughout a slice of the flame. The soot volume fractions in the flame region are in good agreement with the data of other researchers. The reproducibility of these measurements was established through several experiments. The acoustically driven flame provides the possibility of more repeatable measurements of the transient behavior of these pool fires.