Experimental Facility for Ignition and Burning of Solid Materials aboard SJ-10 Satellite

Ignition of solid fuels and subsequent transition to flame spread is of fundamental interest and practical importance for fire safety. Motivated primarily by fire safety of spacecraft, a renewed interest in microgravity flame spread over solid materials has arisen. With few exceptions, however, research on microgravity flame spread has been focused on thermally thin fuels due to the constraint on available test time. Till now still little is known about flame spread over thick fuels in microgravity. A facility is described, which has been designed to examine the ignition and burning behaviors of thick solids onboard SJ-10 satellite of China. The combustion experiments will be conducted with varying low velocity flow and varying ambient oxygen concentration. Other variables to be tested are the effects of fuel type and geometry. The important observations from space experiments include flame behavior and appearance as a function of oxygen concentration and flow velocity, temperature variation in gas and solid phases, and flame spread rate. The research will focus on:(i) finding a limiting oxygen concentration or flow velocity where a flame will propagate in microgravity, and comparing the limits with those on Earth, (ii) evaluating effects of flow velocity, oxygen percentage and material shape on flame spread modes, and (iii) improving the prediction model of solid material combustion.