Mass-flux fraction


The mass-flux fraction is the ratio of mass-flux of a particular chemical species to the total mass flux of a gaseous mixture. It includes both the convectional mass flux and the diffusional mass flux. It was introduced by Joseph O. Hirschfelder and Charles F. Curtiss in 1948 and later by Theodore von Kármán and Sol Penner in 1954. The mass-flux fraction of a species i is defined as
where
It satisfies the identity
similar to the mass fraction, but the mass-flux fraction can take both positive and negative values. This variable is used in steady, one-dimensional combustion problems in place of the mass fraction. For one-dimensional steady flows, the conservation equation for the mass-flux fraction reduces to
where is the mass production rate of species i.