Vaporization and ignition of isolated fuel drops at microgravity conditions - [Evaporazione e ignizione di gocce isolate di n-eptano in condizioni di microgravità]

A discussion covers a general mathematical model for the simulation of the vaporization and ignition of an isolated fuel drop at microgravity conditions; numerical difficulties of the resulting differential algebraic system, both due to the complexity of the kinetic mechanism and to the non-linearities of the transport properties; validation of the vaporization model and transport properties of the fuel on the basis of the experimental measurements on n-heptane vaporization in nitrogen at different pressures; low and high temperature ignitions; and comparisons with experimental measurements obtained at different conditions, which confirmed the reliability of the model.