Droplet Combustion Lab (2D): Microgravity Flame Simulator

Inside the ISS Combustion Integrated Rack, researchers suspend a single fuel droplet on a thin support fiber and ignite it to study how flames behave with no buoyancy to drive them. This 2D cutaway rebuilds that experiment: a droplet burns down under the classical d²-law while a gravity slider blends between a true microgravity spherical diffusion flame and a full 1g buoyant, sooty teardrop, live-updating droplet diameter, flame stand-off radius and the burning-rate constant K as ambient oxygen and starting droplet size are varied. A strip chart beneath the chamber view plots D² against time so the d²-law's straight-line burn-down is directly visible, and the chamber view itself can be dragged and zoomed like a lab camera. It is the same diffusion-flame physics behind spacecraft fire-safety research and terrestrial spray combustion.