Final report.

Mid-America Transportation Center

NTL-FREIGHT-FREIGHT ; NTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION ; NTL-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT-Alternative FuelsNTL-RAIL TRANSPORTATION-RAIL TRANSPORTATION ; NTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-Accidents ;

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With the purpose to minimize or prevent crash-induced fires in road and rail transportation, the

current interest in bio-derived and blended transportation fuels is increasing. Based on two years

of preliminary testing and analysis, it appears to be clear that polymeric additives may be added

to diesel fuel to mitigate the formation of fine mists while allow regular flow through the fuel

system. In this work, computer modeling was adapted as a fast and cost-effective methodology to

identify the target range where polymeric additives could impact the shear-thickening effect on

fuels. The Volume of Fraction (VOF) method was used within the commercial software Fluent to

compute droplet behavior. Two new computational models, the combined SCA-DCA model with

Jiang’s correlation and the SCA-DCA model with exponential fitting, were proposed and

imposed as the boundary conditions, showing a best-fit behavior with the experiment results.

US Transportation Collection