DIFFUSION FLAME OVER A CONTINUOUS MOVING FUEL PLATE UNDER MICROGRAVITY

An analysis of the problem of a diffusion flame embedded in a laminar boundary layer developed by a continuous moving solid fuel plate in a parallel flow of oxidizer is presented. The classical Blasius-type (BT ) boundary-layer combustion, and the Sakiadis-type (ST) boundary-layer combustion where the boundary layer is developed by a continuously mo ving plate in a quiescent environment, are special cases of this gener alized formulation. Numerical results are presented for a range of the mass transfer number and for a fixed Prandtl number of 0.7. The gas-p hase chemistry is assumed to be infinitely fast and a unit Lewis numbe r assumption is also made. The results show that the flames lie closer to the surface for the ST boundary layers compared to the BT ones. Th e BT boundary-layer flames are more sensitive to the relative velocity differences between the freestream and the fuel feed rate compared to the ST boundary layers. Results for local burning rate and skin frict ion are also presented.