Can fuel become stratified?
Hello,
First post; I'm not flight crew, nor engineer, just scientist.
Apologies for trespassing on your professional forum to ask the following but my curiosity has gotten the better of me.
Can fuel on a long, cool flight become stratified?
(Fuel is probably the wrong term considering it is a mass, held within wing tanks, consisting of fuel sensu stricto, other hydrocarbon derivatives, H20, emulsions and various physical particles all of which will behave differently given the same physical environment.)
If the answer is yes then follow-on questions are:
1) Can fuel stratify by density and/or thermal anomaly?
2) Does the ground testing of the fuel take account of possible in-flight stratification?
3) Given that the fuel in both wing tanks was of almost equal weight (bar 30Kg), is it possible for the tank outlets in both wings to encounter a 'bad' layer/stratification at almost the same time?
Regards, Tanimbar