ABSTRACT
In the first three chapters, basic thermochemical principles were developed and used to describe the ideal energetics of various combustion processes. Several important concepts were introduced, including the conservation of atomic species in reactive mixtures, standard-state heats of formation for reactive species, and the ideal heat release rates for solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels using both frozen and equilibrium product species in chemical reactions. Many facets of combustion cannot be inferred from a thermodynamic analysis of chemical energy conversion alone. For example, most high-temperature chemical reactions in combustion involve fluid motion and, thus, the necessity to understand basic fluid mechanics is obvious. In the following chapter, conservation relationships for mass and momentum, as well as energy, will be written for one-dimensional reactive fluid flow in which the particular energy released by exothermic reactions will influence the fluid properties of the flow. An extensive investigation of these three conservation equations is the subject of gas dynamics, which is a separate engineering area of study in and of itself. In this chapter analysis of one-dimensional chemically reactive gas dynamic relations will theoretically indicate that two distinctly different combustion wave propagation phenomena can occur. The characteristics of these two classic results will be treated in detail. An understanding of this ideal case will provide some insight into real combustion processes that occur in internal combustion engines as well as in gas turbine combustors.
