The ignition phenomena of a solid fuel plate of polymethylmethacrylate(PMMA), which is vertically positioned and exposed to a thermal radiation source, is numerically studied here. A two-dimensional transient model includes such various aspects as thermal decomposition of PMMA, gas phase radiation absorption, gas phase chemical reaction, and air entrainment by natural convection. Whereas the previous studies considers the problem approximately in a one-dimensional form by neglecting the natural convection, the present model takes account of the two-dimensional effect of radiation and air entrainment. The inert heating of the solid fuel is also taken into consideration. Radiative heat transfer is incorporated by the Discrete Ordinate Method (DOM) with the absorption coefficient evaluated using gas species concentration.
The thermal history of the solid fuel plate shows a good agreement compared with experimental results. Despite of induced natural convective flow that induces heat loss from the fuel surface, the locally absorbed radiant energy, which is converted to the internal energy, is found to play an important role in the onset of gas phase ignition. The ignition is considered to occur when the rate of variation of gas phase reaction rate reaches its maximum value. Once the ignition takes place, the flame propagates downward. The effects of incident radiant intensity, gas phase absorption coefficient and ambient oxidizer mass fraction on the ignition are also considered.
