Abstract
It is recognized that the burning of droplet arrays represents an idealized condition to study the complex, interacting phenomena of multi-phase flow, thermodynamics, and chemical kinetics. Droplet arrays provide a fundamental foundation upon which descriptions and models of the complex spray combustion can be developed. The major objective of the present study on droplet combustion is to investigate the burning characteristics and exhaust formation mechanisms. This paper presents the preparations for the exhaust sampling and analysis by burning an array of five n-decane droplets on a sounding rocket platform. The primary problem, which has to be solved, is to obtain a representative gas sample from every, specific combustion run. The pursued concept is intrusive as it is necessary to immerse four probes into the combustion chamber. After flame extinction the samples are withdrawn and stored in sampling cylinders for the succeeding analysis. High efforts are put into a reliable and ideal sampling system as well as the preparation of the experiment procedures to ensure high-quality results. This includes experimental testing and numerical studies. The analysis process itself is ground-based and carried out by FT-IR (Fourier Transform Infrared) spectroscopy after the payload retrieval.
