Experimental investigation of spray combustion regimes in aeroengine combustors

At ONERA Fauga-Mauzac center, a new air-breathing propulsion test setup, Prométhée-LACOM, has been recently developed. In this paper, both nonreacting and reacting two-phase flows (nonpremixed spray) were investigated. Under reactive conditions, simultaneous OH-PLIF (planar laser-induced fluorescence) and Mie scattering imaging were implemented in order to characterize the spray flame structure. The different behaviors observed in this study seem to support the existence of spray combustion regimes. Moreover, statistical analysis was performed on the spatial distribution of droplets and indicated that the center-to-center interdroplet distance (nearest neighbor) could be described by means of a perfectly random distribution