Detonation development from a hot spot in methane/air mixtures: Effects of kinetic models

Natural gas is a promising alternative fuel which can be used in internal combustion engines to achieve low carbon emission and high thermal efficiency. However, at high compression ratio, super-knock due to detonation development might occur. In this study, the autoignitive reaction front propagation and detonation development from a hot spot were investigated numerically and the main component of natural gas, methane, was considered. The objective is to assess the performance of different kinetic models in terms of predicting hot spot–induced detonation development in methane/air mixtures. First, simulations for the constant-volume homogeneous ignition in a stoichiometric methane/air mixture were conducted. The ignition delay time, excitation time, critical temperature gradient, thermal sensitivity and reduced activation energy predicted by different kinetic models were obtained and compared. It was found that there are notable discrepancies among the predictions by different kinetic models. Then, hundreds of one-dimensional simulations were conducted for detonation development from a hot spot in a stoichiometric CH4/air mixture. Different autoignition modes were identified and the detonation regimes were derived based on the peak pressure and reaction front propagation speed. It was found that even at the same conditions, different propagation modes can be predicted by different kinetic models. The broadest detonation development regime was predicted by the reduced GRI mechanism, while a relatively narrow regime was predicted by the recent kinetic models such as FFCM-1 and Aramco 3.0. The present results indicate that super-knock prediction strongly depends on the kinetic model used in simulations. Therefore, significant efforts should be devoted to the development and validation of kinetic models for natural gas at engine conditions.