Ignition limits of explosively dispersed fuel

This thesis aims to explore the ignition limits of explosively dispersed fuel. Significant damage can result from the explosive dispersal and ignition of kerosene in the event of an attack on or an accident in a military facility or vessel carrying kerosene fuel tanks. As such, the work conducted approaches the ignition of explosively dispersed fuel from the context of safety in the hopes of either minimizing the amount of fuel ignited or completely eliminating fuel burn. A test article was designed to explosively disperse and ignite kerosene fuel, using flash powder as the driving charge. These test articles were ignited in a blast chamber located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the chamber pressure was recorded to determine the energy released. Some high-speed imaging was also conducted at a different facility on campus. The charge-to-fuel mass ratio was varied, while holding the fuel mass constant, to determine a relationship between the mass ratio and fuel burn fraction. A primary motivation of this study is to find a critical mass ratio at which the fuel does not burn It was observed that kerosene is sensitive to ignition when explosively dispersed in the test configuration. This sensitivity is suspected to result from local heating of rich regions of the fuel cloud by dispersed chunks of burning flash powder. No mass ratio was found at which fuel did not burn after being explosively dispersed. However, a different critical mass ratio was observed which marked the upper limit of fuel burn fraction. This limit was determined to be 63% fuel burn