Chemical Soup: The Mystery of DetonationBy Dr. Robin Tuluie, Ph.D.
Detonation is the result of an amplification of pressure waves, such as sound waves, occurring during the combustion process when the piston is near top dead center (TDC). The actual "knocking" or "ringing" sound of detonation is due to these pressure waves pounding against the insides of the combustion chamber and the piston top, and is not due to 'colliding flame fronts' or 'flame fronts hitting the piston or combustion chamber walls.' Let's look in some detail at how detonation can occur during the combustion process: First, a pressure wave, which is generated during the initial ignition at the plug tip, races through the unburned air-fuel mix ahead of the flame front. Typical flame front speeds for a gasoline/air mixture are on the order of 40 to 50 cm/s (centimeters per second), which is very slow compared to the speed of sound, which is on the order of 300 m/s. In actuality, the true speed of the outwards propagating flame front is considerably higher due to the turbulence of the mixture. Basically, the "flame" is carried outwards by all the little eddies, swirls and flow patterns of the turbulence resident in the air-fuel mix. This model of combustion is called the "eddy burning model" (Blizzard & Keck, 1974). Additionally, the genus of the flame front surface - that is the degree of 'wrinkling' - which usually has a fractal nature (you know, those weird, seemingly random yet oddly patterned computer drawings), is increased greatly by turbulence, which leads to an increased surface area of the flame front. This increase in surface area is then able to burn more mixture since more mixture is exposed to the larger flame front surface. This model of combustion is called the "fractal burning model" (Goudin, F.C. et al. 1987, Abraham et al. 1985). The effects of this are observed in so-called "Schlieren pictures," which are high-speed photographs taken though a quartz window of a specially modified combustion chamber (Fig. 1, above). Schlieren pictures show the various stages of the combustion process, in particular the highly wrinkled and turbulent nature of the flame front propagation (initially called the flame 'kernel'). A higher degree of turbulence, and hence a higher "effective" flame front propagation velocity can be achieved with a so-called squish band combustion chamber design. Sometimes a swirl-type of induction process, in which the incoming mixture is rotating quickly, will achieve the same goal of increasing the burn rate of the mixture. As a general rule-of-thumb the pressure rise in the combustion chamber during the combustion phase is typically 20-30 PSI per degree of crankshaft rotation. Once the pressure rises faster than about 35 PSI/degree, the engine will run very roughly due to the mechanical vibration of the engine components caused by too great of a pressure rise. Sometimes, the pressure wave can be strong enough to cause a self ignition of the fuel, where free radicals (e.g. hydroxyl or other molecules with similar open O-H chains) in the fuel promote this self ignition by the pressure wave. However, this can still occur even without the presence of free radicals; it just won't be quite as likely to happen. This is why high octane fuels, with fewer of these active radicals, can resist detonation better. However, even high octane fuel can detonate - not because of too many free radicals - but because the drastic increase in cylinder pressure has increased the local temperature (and molecular speed) so high that it has reached the ignition temperature of the fuel. This ignition temperature is actually somewhat lower than that of the main hydrocarbon chain of the fuel itself because of the creation of additional radicals resulting from the break-up of the fuel's hydrocarbon chains in intermolecular collisions. Detonation usually happens first at the pressure wave's points of amplification, such as at the edges of the piston crown where reflecting pressure waves from the piston or combustion chamber walls can constructively recombine - this is called constructive interference to yield a very high local pressure. If the speed at which this pressure build-up to detonation occurs is greater than the speed at which the mixture burns, the pressure waves from both the initial ignition at the plug and the pressure waves coming from the problem spots (e.g. the edges of the piston crown, etc.) will set off immediate explosions, rather than combustion, of the mixture across the combustion chamber, leading to further pressure waves and even more havoc. Whenever these colliding pressure fronts meet, their destructive power is unleashed on the engine parts, often leading to a mechanical destruction of the motor. The pinging sound of detonation is just these pressure waves pounding against the insides of the combustion chamber and piston top. Piston tops, ring lands and rod bearings are especially exposed to damage from detonation. In addition, these pressure fronts (or shock waves) can sweep away the unburned boundary layer (see figure 2 above) of air-fuel mix near the metal surfaces in the combustion chamber. The boundary layer is a thin layer of fuel-air mix just above the metal surfaces of the combustion chamber (see figure 2, above). Physical principles (aptly called boundary conditions) require that under normal circumstances (i.e. equilibrium combustion, which means "nice, slow and thermally well transmitted") this boundary layer stays close to the metal surfaces. It usually is quite thin, maybe a fraction of a millimeter to a millimeter thick. This boundary layer will not burn even when reached by the flame front because it is in thermal contact with the cool metal, whose temperature is always well below the ignition temperature of the fuel-air mix. Only under the extreme conditions of detonation can this boundary layer be "swept away" by the high-pressure shock front that occurs during detonation. In that case, during these "far from equilibrium" process of the pressure-induced shock wave entering the boundary layer, the physical principles allured to above (the boundary conditions) will be effectively violated. The degree of violation will depend on (a) the pressure fluctuation caused by the shock front and (b) the adhesive and cohesive strength of the boundary layer. These boundary layers of air-fuel mix remain unburned during the normal combustion process due to their close proximity to the cool metal surfaces and act as an insulating layer and prevent a direct exposure of metal to the flame. Since pressure waves created during detonation can sweep away these unburned boundary layers of air-fuel mix, they leave parts of the piston top and combustion chamber exposed to the flame front. This, in turn, causes an immediate rise in the temperature of these parts, often leading to direct failure or at least to engine overheating. Scientists and engineers have recently begun to understand combustion in much greater detail thanks to very ambitious computer simulations that model every detail of the combustion process (Chin et al. 1990). Basically, a complete computer model includes a solution to the thermodynamical problem, that is a solution to the conservation equations and equation of state, as well as a mass burning rate and heat transfer model. In addition, a separate code (called a chemical kinetics code) models the chemical processes which occur during combustion and sometimes juggles several thousand different chemical species, some in vanishingly small concentrations! Needless to say these codes require huge amounts of memory and CPU time that only the largest supercomputers in the world can provide. They are far beyond the reach of the private individual and usually only employed by large research institutions or major car manufactures.
Someone asked:Mike Meagher (meagher@pentec.wa.com) wondered about the effects of the squish band.
Someone wondered: Is the extra cooling of the squish band less than the added heat?
David Goodenough (dg@pallio.sf.ca.us) asked:Suppose I mix one gallon of 87 octane pump gas, and one gallon of 92 octane pump gas. Are you telling me that instead of two gallons of 89.5 octane gas I have something closer to 92 (like between 90 and 91)?
David also asked:While I'm at it, how does the energy per ounce of mixture react?
Ramon Hontiveros (r22666@paccvm.sps.mot.com) wrote:Ok, I got the article and read it, now some questions: Isn't the fuel already in gaseous form due to carburation?
Ramon also wondered:does carburation just "spray" the gas into the air flow as tiny droplets which are thus still in liquified form?
Ramon also asks:Also, if the fuel does evaporate quickly and creates additional pressure - thus reducing the amount of fresh charge - then the engine will produce less horsepower, right?
REFERENCES
Abraham, J. et al., 1985, "A Discussion of Turbulent Flame Structure in Premixed Charges", SAE paper 850345 Blizzard, N.C. and Keck, J.C., 1974, "Exp. and Theo. Investigation of Turbulent Burning Model for Internal Combustion Engines", SAE paper 740191 Chin et al., 1990, "Diagnostics and Modeling of Combustion in Internal Combustion Engines," JSME, Tokyo, p. 81-86 Goudin, et al., 1987, "An Application of Fractals to Modeling of Premixed Turbulent Flames", Combustion and Flame 68, p.249-266
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