Numerical Modeling of Falling Aluminum Particle Oxidation in Air

A. Davidy
Israel Military Industry, Ramat-Hasharon, Israel
Published in 2010

Because of its high enthalpy of combustion, aluminum has been added to energetic materials. In this paper, a two dimension thermal model is developed and assessed to describe the interrelated processes of Aluminum particle oxidation by using the software COMSOL Multiphysics. The thermal model consists of thermal radiation, forced convection and thermal conduction and oxygen diffusion. It is assumed the aluminum particle is coated with Aluminum oxide layer. A new method is implemented in order to resolve the problem of the scattering of plane electromagnetic waves from a coated aluminum particle. To resolve the flow pattern around the particle,we used the Navier-Stokes equations and couple the equations of motion and oxygen concentration balance equations through the multiphysics feature. This provides the structure of the diffusion layer from the simultaneous solution of these equations.