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Clean Air: International Journal on Energy for a Clean Environment

ISSN for PRINT: 1561-4417

Institutional price:	$451.00
Issues per year:	4

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2007, Volume8

95 pages

DOI: 10.1615/InterJEnerCleanEnv.v8.i1

Issue price - $128.00

OPTIMIZATION OF A SURROGATE REDUCED AVIATION FUEL-AIR REACTION MECHANISM USING A GENETIC ALGORITHM

Lionel Elliott
Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Derek B. Ingham
Department of Applied Mathematical Studies, The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

Adrian G. Kyne
Energy and Resources Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

N. S. Mera
Energy and Resources Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

M. Pourkashanian
Department of Fuel and Energy, Energy and Resources Research Institute / Centre for Computational Fluid Dynamics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

C. W. Wilson
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK

ABSTRACT

This study investigates reducing an existing detailed aviation fuel-air reaction mechanism based on identifying the most important reactions using a rate of production analysis. A genetic algorithm (GA) approach is then used to determine new reaction rate parameters (As, βs, and E_as in the Arrhenius expressions) that recover the mechanism's ability to predict experimentally determined species and ignition delay profiles. The GA does not blindly produce mechanisms that reproduce any given profile; instead, the reaction rate coefficients are confined to lie within physically realistic bounds associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology database. This leads to mechanisms that can be applied to combustion problems that lie outside those used in the optimization process. A new multiobjective function has been developed that allows the GA to fit both ignition delay and premix flame data. This allows the substantial amount of existing experimental data to be incorporated into the mechanism validation procedure, thus improving the predictive capabilities of the mechanisms that are being developed. This study provides a reduced aviation fuel-air reaction scheme whose overall performance in predicting experimental major species profiles and ignition delay times is comparable to that of the original detailed starting mechanism.