INFLUENCE OF SUPERCRITICAL CONDITIONS ON PRECOMBUSTION CHEMISTRY AND TRANSPORT BEHAVIOR OF JET FUELS

ADVANCED ENGINE TECHNOLOGY AND HYPERSONIC FLIGHT SPEEDS OF FUTURE MILITARY AIRCRAFTS PLACE INCREASING HEAT LOAD ON JET FUELS. THE INCREASE IN HEAT LOAD PUSH THE OPERATION OF FUELS INTO THEIR SUPERCRITICAL REGIME. THE PERFORMANCE OF FUTURE AIRCRAFT WILL BE SERIOUSLY LIMITED IF FUELS CANNOT BE OPERATED EFFECTIVELY AT SUPERCRITICAL CONDITIONS. THE PRECOMBUSTION CHEMISTRY AND TRANSPORT PROCESSES AT THESE CONDITIONS ARE NOT YET WELL UNDERSTOOD. IN THIS PROJECT, BASIC RESEARCH EXPERIMENTS WILL BE PERFORMED AND ADVANCED MATHEMATICAL MODELS WILL BE DEVELOPED TO STUDY THE TRANSPORT, AND PRECOMBUSTION THERMAL DEGRADATION PROCESSES. THE CONDITIONS ON THE TRANSPORT PROPERTIES AND HEAT TRANSFER PROCESSES. FOR THIS, THEORETICAL MODELS BASED ON THE HARD SPHERE THEORY WILL BE DEVELOPED TO OBTAIN HYDROCARBONS PROPERTY DATA BASE. FOR VALIDATING THE MODELS, EXPERIMENTAL TESTS WILL BE CONDUCTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF PROF. L. D. CHEN. IN PHASE II, ADDITIONAL EXPERIMENTS WILL BE PERFORMED TO UNDERSTAND SUPERCRITICAL PRECOMBUSTION CHEMISTRY TO AID THE FORMULATION OF CHEMISTRY MODELS. THE DEVELOPED TRANSPORT AND CHEMISTRY MODELS WILL BE COUPLED WITH AN EXISTING CFD CODE.