The flame plasma treatment studied in this thesis was able to oxidize the surface of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in a fraction of a second. It was found to be a much faster way to modify PDMS surface wettability than the current technologies. The surface wettability of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) treated with flame plasma was studied. The surface wettability was characterized by contact angle m...

The effect of O(3) on C(2)H(4)/synthetic-air flame propagation at sub-atmospheric pressure was investigated through detailed experiments and simulations. A Hencken burner provided an ideal platform to interrogate flame speed enhancement, producing a steady, laminar, nearly one-dimensional, minimally curved, weakly stretched, and nearly adiabatic flame that could be accurately compared with simu...

The effects of flame treatment on the surface characteristics of four injection moulded, automotive grade, polypropylene samples, pigmented with carbon black, have been studied. The changes in wettability have been monitored by water contact angle and Dyne inks, whilst XPS has been used to establish the changes in oxygen surface concentration as a function of flame treatment. As expected carbon...

Abstract A flamelet-based approach that accounts for turbulence-chemistry interaction has been formulated to simulate NOx formation in turbulent lean premixed combustion. In the simulations, the species NO is transported and solved with the chemical source term being modelled through its formation in flame fronts and its formation rate in post-flame regions. The flame-front NO and post-flame NO...

The speed of propagation of a premixed turbulent flame correlates with the intensity of the turbulence encountered by the flame. One consequence of this property is that premixed flames in both laboratory experiments and practical combustors require some type of stabilization mechanism to prevent blow-off and flashback. The stabilization devices often introduce a level of geometric complexity t...

An experimental study of the interaction of a planar diffusion flame with a line vortex is presented. A planar diffusion flame is established between two coflowing, equal velocity streams of acetylene diluted with nitrogen and air. A line vortex is generated on demand by momentarily pulsing one of the flow streams by way of electromagnetic actuation of a piston in the flow apparatus. The flame–...

We present a numerical model which allows us to investigate thermonuclear flames in Type Ia supernova explosions. The model is based on a finite-volume explicit hydrodynamics solver employing PPM. Using the level-set technique combined with in-cell reconstruction and flux-splitting schemes we are able to describe the flame in the discontinuity approximation. We apply our implementation to flame...

Microgravity combustion is fundamentally characterized by the absence of buoyancy driven flows. To facilitate a large range of diagnostics on microgravity flames, it is useful to create an equivalent microbuoyant condition in an earth-based laboratory. This experiment simulates microbuoyancy using electric fields to balance local convection in a region of the flame. Previous studies used N2 coh...

In this study, a novel phosphorus-containing flame retardant copolymer of spirocyclic pentaerythritol di(phosphate monochloride) and bisphenol S (SPD-BS) was successfully synthesized and used as a flame retardant in diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) epoxy resins. The chemical structure of the SPD-BS was characterized using FT-IR and H NMR spectra. The thermal properties were investigated ...

Y2O3:Eu nanophosphors were prepared by flame synthesis using ethanol or water as precursor solutions. The effects of precursor solvents and flame temperature on particle size, morphology, and photoluminescence intensity were investigated. The results showed that flame synthesis using ethanol solution could produce nanoparticles with better homogeneity, smoother surface structure, and stronger p...