Time evolution of the high temperature region formed by laser induced breakdown and of the development of the flame kernel in the constant volume combustion vessel

摘要

The lean combustion is one of the key techniques for the advanced internal combustion systems due to the requirement of the higher thermal efficiency. Since the successful ignition must be guaranteed even in the lean combustion, advanced ignition systems have been developed in this decade. Laser ignition is one of the advanced ignition systems which have the profits of the flexibility in the position and the timing of ignition. To develop this ignition system for the actual combustion system, it is required to reveal the underlying physics of the laser ignition. Particularly, the time evolution of high temperature region formed by laser induced breakdown should be discussed. In this study, therefore, the time evolution of the high temperature region formed by the laser induced breakdown and the development of flame kernel were observed by using high-speed imaging. The ignition trials of methane/air lean premixed mixture were carried out in the constant volume combustion vessel to obtain minimum laser pulse energy for ignition (MPE). Results showed that the light emission from plasma formed by laser induced breakdown remained at least in several tens nano-seconds. In addition, there were large differences between the breakdown threshold and the MPE, which meant that the breakdown threshold did not determine the minimum pulse energy for ignition.