Insight into the Ozone-Assisted Low-Temperature Combustion of Dimethyl Ether by Means of Stabilized Cool Flames.

The low-temperature combustion kinetics of dimethyl ether (DME) were studied by means of stabilized cool flames in a heated stagnation plate burner configuration using ozone-seeded premixed flows of DME/O2. Direct imaging of CH2O* chemiluminescence and laser-induced fluorescence of CH2O were used to determine the flame front positions in a wide range of lean and ultra-lean equivalence ratios and ozone concentrations for two strain rates. The temperature and species mole fraction profiles along the flame were measured by coupling thermocouples, gas chromatography, micro-chromatography, and quadrupole mass spectrometry analysis. A new kinetic model was built on the basis of the Aramco 1.3 model, coupled with a validated submechanism of O3 chemistry, and was updated to improve the agreement with the obtained experimental results and experimental data available in the literature. The main results show the efficiency of the tested model to predict the flame front position and temperature in every tested condition, as well as the importance of reactions typical of atmospheric chemistry in the prediction of cool flame occurrence. The agreement on the fuel and major products is overall good, except for methanol, highlighting some missing kinetic pathways for the DME/O2/O3 system, possibly linked to the direct addition of atomic oxygen on the fuel radical, modifying the product distribution after the cool flame.

Atomic Partial Charges as Descriptors for Barrier Heights.

Atomic partial charges are found to be valuable descriptors for barrier heights of unimolecular reactions due to the considerable information about the electronic structure embedded in them. If the chemical changes of the reactions are somewhat centralized at a single atom, the respective partial charge is a potentially meaningful descriptor and might outperform bond dissociation energies as descriptors. We propose that atomic partial charges should be considered as barrier height descriptors in future research.

Investigation of Sheet Metal Forming Using a Rapid Compression Machine.

The primary goal of this work is to understand the deformation behavior of an aluminum alloy (Al) workpiece by using a rapid compression machine (RCM). The primary novelty in this work is that this is the first study on sheet metal forming using RCM. Numerical simulation and experimental results are in excellent agreement, e.g., the dome-shape, the maximum height, the final outer diameter, and the thickness distribution of the deformed workpiece. We demonstrate that the maximum deformation height grows linearly with the peak pressure with an intercept tending to zero. The proposed linear relationship can be effectively used for designing new components for a specific application. Moreover, the proposed numerical model was competent in reproducing the experimental results of damage initiation and evolution in case of high peak pressure as well as the initial misalignment of the workpiece. The results of this investigation revealed that a rapid compression machine can be utilized efficiently for the controlled forming of complex shapes of metal sheets.