An improved endwall-injection technique for examining high-temperature ignition of lubricating oils in shock tubes

Ignition of the lubricating fluid in a mechanical system is a highly undesirable and unsafe condition that can arise from the elevated temperatures and pressures to which the lubricant is subjected. It is therefore important to understand the fundamental chemistry behind its ignition to predict and prevent this condition. Lubricating oils, particularly those with a mineral oil base, are very complex mixtures of thousands of hydrocarbons. Additionally, these oils have very low vapor pressures and high viscosities. These physical characteristics present considerable barriers to examining and understanding lubricant ignition chemistry. Therefore, a novel experimental design was devised to create and introduce a lubricant aerosol into a shock-tube facility in a reliable yet relatively simple manner. In this way, the lubricant can be quasi-homogeneously introduced into the shock tube where it will be vaporized by the incident shock wave, and combustion can be observed behind the reflected shock wave. To characterize the technique and anchor it with previously established methods, n-hexadecane was chosen to be tested both with the endwall injection and the well-established, heated shock tube techniques. This comparison showed good agreement, proving the ability of the simple technique to produce reliable ignition delay time (IDT) results. From here, Jet-A was also tested with the current injection technique and compared to a previous generation of the technique to highlight the advantages of the present method. Then, IDT results for mineral oil were collected to establish a baseline IDT set to which off-the-shelf lubricants and additional mixtures can be compared. Finally, IDTs for the off-the-shelf, mineral-based lubricant Mobil DTE 732 were obtained and compared to the baseline as well as the n-hexadecane results. All experiments were conducted near atmospheric pressure and for temperatures between 1084 and 1530 K. An analysis of the system estimated the effective stoichiometry to be around ϕ = 1.15. Although no kinetics mechanisms exist for lubrication oils, preliminary model predictions made by modern chemical kinetics mechanisms for an alkane with 16 carbon atoms were then compared to the results to elucidate some of the chemistry this new method will allow the community to probe. This paper establishes the new method as a viable way to study and compare the ignition behavior of lubricating oils and other very low-vapor-pressure fuels in a shock tube.