Ignition limits of short-term overloaded electric wires in microgravity

Ignition phenomena of electric wires carrying short-term excess electric currents were investigated in microgravity with experiments and calculations. Microgravity experiments were conducted in 100 m and 50 m drop towers and calculations were carried out with a one dimensional cylindrical coordinate system. The experimental results showed that the limiting oxygen concentration (LOC) under a given electric current was much lower in microgravity than that in normal gravity except for extremely large electric current overload cases. According to the calculations, the supplied electric current, the Joule energy supplied to the wire, determined the amount of pyrolysis gas from the insulation and the resulting thickness of the gaseous fuel layer around the sample in gas phase increased. The increased fuel layer thickness resulted in a longer ignition delay, which leads to lower LOC. The changes in the estimated LOC changed as a function of supplied energy and agreed well with the experimental results. Further, the minimum ignition energy causing ignition (ignition limit) is nearly constant under a constant oxygen concentration, which supports experimental findings in previous research. (C) 2012 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.