High-repetition-rate laser ignition of fuel-air mixtures

A laser-ignition (LI) method is presented that utilizes a high-repetition-rate (HRR) nanosecond laser to reduce minimal ignition energies of individual pulses by ∼10 times while maintaining comparable total energies. The most common LI employs a single nanosecond-laser pulse with energies on the order of tens of millijoules to ignite combustible gaseous mixtures. Because of the requirements of high energy per pulse, fiber coupling of traditional LI systems is difficult to implement in real-world systems with limited optical access. The HRR LI method demonstrated here has an order of magnitude lower per-pulse energy requirement than the traditional single-pulse LI technique, potentially allowing delivery through standard commercial optical fibers. Additionally, the HRR LI approach significantly increases the ignition probability of lean combustible mixtures in high-speed flows while maintaining low individual pulse energies.