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Engineering topics

Radcliffe, S. W.

Publications and source records attributed to Radcliffe, S. W..

Soot oxidation rates in gas turbine engines

A basis is proposed for extrapolating soot oxidation rate measurements obtained in laboratory flames to the more extreme operating conditions of gas turbine combustion chambers. The proposal is based on the observation that, within probable experimental uncertainty, the limited soot oxidation measurements correlate with the more extensive measurements of the surface oxidation rates of macroscopic samples of pyrographite. The soot oxidation rates thus determined for the conditions of a typical gas turbine combustion chamber are considerably lower than estimates which were based on simple extrapolations of the flame data.

Radcliffe, S. W.↗

Shock-tube measurements of carbon to oxygen atom ratios for incipient soot formation with C2H2, C2H4 and C2H6 fuels

The critical atomic carbon to oxygen ratios, Phi sub C, for incipient soot formation in shock heated acetylene, ethylene, ethane/oxygen/ argon mixtures was measured over the temperature range 2000 K to 2500 K for reactant partial pressures between 0.1 and 0.4 atoms. Absorption of light from a He-Ne laser at 6328A was was used to detect soot. It was observed that the values of Phi sub C for all three fuels increased uniformly with temperature such that at the highest temperatures Phi sub C was considerably greater than unity, i.e. greater than the value of about unity at which solid carbon should have been precipitated on a thermochemical equilibrium basis. Observations were made over periods extending up to about one millisecond, which was well in excess of the time required for the major heat release of the combustion reactions. The relevance of these experimental findings to the problem of soot formation in gas turbine combustion chambers is discussed.

Radcliffe, S. W.↗

Experimental design for research on shock-turbulence interaction

Report investigates the production of acoustic waves in the interaction of a supersonic shock and a turbulence environment. The five stages of the investigation are apparatus design, development of instrumentation, preliminary experiment, turbulence generator selection, and main experiments.

Radcliffe, S. W.↗