Thermal-drag and Transition from Quasi-steady to Highly-unsteady Combustion of a Fuel Droplet in the Presence of Upstream Velocity Oscillations

Numerical studies on the behaviors of combustion of 1-butanol fuel droplet at presence of upstream velocity oscillation are performed. Fuel droplet has an initial diameter of 1.25 mm and ambiance pressure and temperature are 0.4 MPa and 300 K, respectively. These conditions are those in which the microgravity experiments in literature conducted. In the excellent agreement with the experimental data, numerical results show a significant enhancement of the burning rate of droplet compared to what is predicted by quasi-steady film theory models. The mechanism of the enhancement of burning rate is clarified then by observation of a new mechanism that is named thermal-drag, TD. It is shown, depending on the amplitude and frequency of the upstream velocity oscillation, the flame in wake region of droplet can move toward the droplet surface by the force of vortex flow motions produced by the TD mechanism. It is verified that such movement of the flame is responsible for the enhancement of the burning rate and deviation of the response of the evaporation process form the predictions of the quasi-steady model. Frequency analysis of the burning rate reveals that at low frequency and amplitude the FFT diagram of the burning rate contains of only one main peak synchronies with the frequency of upstream velocity oscillation, which implies a quasi-steady response. However; at high frequency and amplitude the diagram includes of wide range of frequencies beside of the main peak that readily shows deviation from the quasi-steady conditions. In the latter, the study on the response of the combustion to the upstream velocity fluctuations in which the fluctuations contains of three wave numbers shows the amplification of the effects of low frequency fluctuations rather than that of damping of the effects of high frequency fluctuations on the evaporation processes.     

Statistical Analysis of Turbulent Flame-Droplet Interaction: A Direct Numerical Simulation Study

Turbulent combustion of mono-disperse droplet-mist has been analysed based on three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) in canonical configuration under decaying turbulence for a range of different values of droplet equivalence ratio (?_d), droplet diameter (a_d) and root-mean-square value of turbulent velocity (u^′). The fuel is supplied in liquid phase and the evaporation of droplets gives rise to gaseous fuel for the flame propagation into the droplet-mist. It has been found that initial droplet diameter, turbulence intensity and droplet equivalence ratio can have significant influences on the volume-integrated burning rate, flame surface area and burning rate per unit area. The droplets are found to evaporate predominantly in the preheat zone, but some droplets penetrate the flame front, reaching the burned gas side where they evaporate and some of the resulting fuel vapour diffuses back towards the flame front. The combustion process in gaseous phase takes place predominantly in fuel-lean mode even for ?_d > 1. The probability of finding fuel-lean mixture increases with increasing initial droplet diameter because of slower evaporation of larger droplets and this predominantly fuel-lean mode of combustion exhibits the attributes of low Damköhler number combustion and gives rise to thickening of flame with increasing droplet diameter. The chemical reaction is found to take place under both premixed and non-premixed modes of combustion and the relative contribution of non-premixed combustion to overall heat release increases with increasing droplet size. The statistical behaviours of the flame propagation and mode of combustion have been analysed in detail and detailed physical explanations have been provided for the observed behaviour.     

Large Eddy Simulation of a Polydisperse Ethanol Spray Flame

Ethanol is identified as an interesting alternative fuel. In this regards, the predictive capability of combustion Large Eddy Simulation approach coupled to Lagrangian droplet dynamic model to retrieve the turbulent droplet dispersion, droplet size distribution, spray evolution and combustion properties is investigated in this paper for an ethanol spray flame. Following the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach with a fully two way coupling, the Favre-filtered low Mach number Navier-Stokes equations are solved on structured grids with dynamic sub-grid scale models to describe the turbulent carrier gas phase. Droplets are injected in polydisperse manner and generated in time dependent boundary conditions. They evaporate to form an air-fuel mixture that yields spray flame. Part of the ethanol droplets evaporates within the prevaporization area before reaching the combustion zone, making the flame to burn in a partially premixed regime. The chemistry is described by a tabulated detailed chemistry based on the flamelet generated manifold approach. The fuel, ethanol, is modeled by a detailed reaction mechanism consisting of 56 species and 351 reversible reactions. The simulation results including excess gas temperature, droplet velocities and corresponding fluctuations, droplet mean diameters and spray volume flux at different distances from the exit plane show good agreement with experimental data. Analysis of combustion spray features allows gaining a deep insight into the two-phase flow process ongoing.     

3D Velocimetry and droplet sizing in the Ranque–Hilsch vortex tube

The Ranque–Hilsch vortex tube (RHVT) is a device currently used to generate local cooling. In general, the fluid that is injected into the RHVT is a single-phase gas. In this study, however, we have added a dispersed phase (water droplets) to the gas (nitrogen). By means of phase Doppler particle analysis, three velocity components, their higher order moments, and sizes of droplets were measured, showing high intensity velocity fluctuations in the core region of the main vortex. The frequency spectrum of the velocity is presented and reveals that wobbling of the vortex axis is the cause of the high intensity fluctuations. The wobbling motion reduces the influence of the droplet size on the radial droplet velocity.     

Experimental Characterization of Premixed Flame Instabilities of a Model Gas Turbine Burner

In recent years, the NO _x emissions of heavy duty gas turbine burners have been significantly reduced by introducing premixed combustion. These highly premixed burners are known to be prone to combustion oscillations. In this paper, investigations of a single model gas turbine burner are reported focusing on thermo-acoustic instabilities and their interaction with the periodic fluctuations of the velocity and pressure. Phase-locked optical measurement techniques such as LDA and LIF gave insight into the mechanisms.Detailed investigations of a gas turbine combustor rig revealed that the combustor as well as the air plenum oscillate in Helmholtz modes. These instabilities could be attributed to the phase lag of the pressure oscillations between the air plenum and the combustor, which causes an acceleration and deceleration of the air flow through the burner and, therefore, alternating patterns of fuel rich and lean bubbles. When these bubbles reach the reaction zone, density fluctuations are generated which in turn lead to velocity fluctuations and, hence, keep up the pressure oscillations.With increasing the equivalence ratio strong combustion oscillations could be identified at the same frequency. Similarly as with weak oscillations, Helmholtz mode pressure fluctuations are present but the resulting velocity fluctuations in the combustor can be described as a pumping motion of the flow. By the velocity fluctuations the swirl stabilization of the flame is disturbed. At the same time, the oscillating pressure inside the combustor reaches its minimum value. Shortly after the flame expands again, the pressure increases inside the combustor. This phenomenon which is triggered by the pressure oscillations inside the air plenum seems to be the basic mechanism of the flame instability and leads to a significant increase of the pressure amplitudes.     

Flame Structure and Propagation in Turbulent Flame-Droplet Interaction: A Direct Numerical Simulation Analysis

Three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) in canonical configuration have been employed to study the combustion of mono-disperse droplet-mist under turbulent flow conditions. A parametric study has been performed for a range of values of droplet equivalence ratio ?_d, droplet diameter a_d and root-mean-square value of turbulent velocity u^′. The fuel is supplied entirely in liquid phase such that the evaporation of the droplets gives rise to gaseous fuel which then facilitates flame propagation into the droplet-mist. The combustion process in gaseous phase takes place predominantly in fuel-lean mode even for ?_d>1. The probability of finding fuel-lean mixture increases with increasing initial droplet diameter because of slower evaporation of larger droplets. The chemical reaction is found to take place under both premixed and non-premixed modes of combustion: the premixed mode ocurring mainly under fuel-lean conditions and the non-premixed mode under stoichiometric or fuel-rich conditions. The prevalence of premixed combustion was seen to decrease with increasing droplet size. Furthermore, droplet-fuelled turbulent flames have been found to be thicker than the corresponding turbulent stoichiometric premixed flames and this thickening increases with increasing droplet diameter. The flame thickening in droplet cases has been explained in terms of normal strain rate induced by fluid motion and due to flame normal propagation arising from different components of displacement speed. The statistical behaviours of the effective normal strain rate and flame stretching have been analysed in detail and detailed physical explanations have been provided for the observed behaviour. It has been found that the droplet cases show higher probability of finding positive effective normal strain rate (i.e. combined contribution of fluid motion and flame propagation), and negative values of stretch rate than in the stoichiometric premixed flame under similar flow conditions, which are responsible for higher flame thickness and smaller flame area generation in droplet cases.     

Experiments on the instability modes of buoyant diffusion flames and effects of ambient atmosphere on the instabilities

Large scale dynamic behavior of buoyant diffusion flames were studied experimentally. It was found that buoyant diffusion flames originating from circular nozzles exhibit two different modes of flame instabilities. The first mode results in a sinuous meandering of the diffusion flame, characteristic of flames originating from small diameter nozzles. This instability originates at some distance downstream of the nozzle exit in the contraction region of the buoyant flame envelope and develops into a sinuous motion of the flame. The second mode is the varicose mode which develops very close to the nozzle exit as axisymmetric perturbations of a contracting flame surface. In this mode, flame oscillations result in the formation of toroidal vortical structures that convect through the flame and cause periodic burn out at the flame top resulting in the observed flame height fluctuations. The average flame heights are found to be typically shorter for these flames. The oscillation frequencies and their scaling for the two modes are also different with the sinuous mode having higher frequencies than the varicose mode. It was also observed that the instability can switch from one mode to the other and the probability of observing the varicose mode appears to increase with increasing Richardson number. Additionally, the feasibility of altering the behavior of buoyant diffusion flames was explored through variation of the oxidizer medium density. It was found that the flame oscillations can be completely suppressed for flames burning in helium rich helium–oxygen mixtures. At lower helium concentrations, the oscillation frequency can be significantly reduced. In order to enhance the buoyancy effect, CO₂–O₂ mixtures were also studied. However, the density increase and its effects on flame oscillation frequency were found to be small compared to those flames burning in air. These experiments point towards the feasibility of altering buoyant flame behavior under earth gravity and studying the large scale dynamical aspects of buoyant flames without the need of variable gravity environment. Received: 2 March 1999/Accepted: 6 August 1999     

Experimental analysis of the flow characteristics of a pressure-atomised spray

An experimental setup has been created to allow measurements of the properties of the gas phase, the liquid phase and the mixture in a pressure-atomised spray of water, in terms of both mean quantities and Reynolds stresses. This setup involves laser Doppler velocimetry for determining the velocity of either the gas or liquid phase, according to the parameters used, such as seeding or no-seeding of the ambient air, laser source power, or photo-multiplier gains, droplet tracking velocimetry for determining the velocity and characteristic size of the droplets, and a single optical probe for determining the mean volume fraction of the liquid, from which the liquid mean mass fraction and the mean density of the mixture are inferred. The experimental conditions, in particular in terms of liquid and gas Weber numbers, were chosen in a range for which the liquid phase turbulent kinetic energy should be mainly responsible for the liquid-jet primary break-up, these flow conditions lying within the second wind-induced atomization regime. Results reported herein are more specifically focused on the region ranging from 400 nozzle diameters to 800 nozzle diameters, where the liquid core is disrupted. They provide new information about the formation and properties of such pressure-atomised sprays, in particular in terms of the role played by the Reynolds stresses resulting from the slip velocity between the liquid and the gas. The mean slip velocity is directly related to the turbulent flux of liquid. Such information will be used in the future to develop new turbulence models since very limited experimental information is so far available for these terms.     

The influence of gas phase velocity fluctuations on primary atomization and droplet deformation

The effects of grid-generated velocity fluctuations on the primary atomization and subsequent droplet deformation of a range of laminar liquid jets are examined using microscopic high-speed backlit imaging of the break-up zone and laser Doppler anemometry of the gas phase separately. This is done for fixed gas mean flow conditions in a miniature wind tunnel experiment utilizing a selection of fuels, turbulence-generating grids and two syringe sizes. The constant mean flow allows for an isolated study of velocity fluctuation effects on primary atomization in a close approximation to homogeneous decaying turbulence. The qualitative morphology of the primary break-up region is examined over a range of turbulence intensities, and spectral analysis is performed in order to ascertain the break-up frequency which, for a case of no grid, compares well with the existing literature. The addition of velocity fluctuations tends to randomize the break-up process. Slightly downstream of the break-up region, image processing is conducted in order to extract a number of metrics, which do not depend on droplet sphericity, and these include droplet aspect ratio and orientation, the latter quantity being somewhat unconventional in spray characterization. A turbulent Weber number $We^{\prime}$ which takes into account gas phase fluctuations is utilized to characterize the resulting droplet shapes, in addition to a mean Weber number <We _d>. Above a $We^{\prime}>0.05$ a clear positive relationship exists between the mean aspect ratio of droplets and the turbulent Weber number where $We^{\prime}$ is varied by altering all relevant variables including the velocity root mean square, the initial droplet diameter, the surface tension and the density.     

煤油液滴直径对两相旋转爆轰发动机流场的影响

为探究煤油液滴不同初始直径对气液两相旋转爆轰发动机流场的影响,假设初始注入的煤油液滴具有均匀直径,考虑雾化破碎、蒸发等过程,建立了非定常两相爆轰的Eulerian-Lagrangian模型,进行了液态煤油/高温空气爆轰的非预混二维数值模拟。结果表明：在初始液滴直径为1～70μm的工况范围,燃烧室内均形成了单个稳定传播的旋转爆轰波;全局当量比为1时,爆轰波前的空气区域大于液滴煤油的蒸气区域,导致波前燃料空气混合不均匀,波前均存在富油区和贫油区,两相速度差导致分离出的空气形成低温条带;当煤油液滴的初始直径较小时,波前的反应物混合过程主要受蒸发的影响,爆轰波可稳定传播;当直径减小至1μm时,煤油液滴在入口处即蒸发,旋转爆轰波表现为气相传播的特性,爆轰波结构平整;当煤油液滴的初始直径较大时,波前的反应物混合过程主要受液滴破碎的影响;对于相同的燃料质量流量,在不同初始煤油液滴直径工况下,煤油液滴最大的停留时间均占爆轰波传播时间尺度的80%以上;爆轰波前燃料预蒸发为气相的占比越高,爆轰波的传播速度越高;初始液滴直径为10～70μm的工况范围内,爆轰波的速度随初始直径的增大先升高后降低。     

Transient combustion of a heating droplet in a gravitational environment

The transient combustion characteristics of a droplet suddenly exposed to the envelope flames in an atmospheric environment are studied numerically. Combustion can be divided into a droplet heating-up and a constant-droplet-temperature burning. The naturally-convective flow is not knowna priori, but provided as part of the solution. During the heating-up stage, the temperature and evaporation rate of droplet increase sharply, and the square of diameter decreases slightly as time proceeds. In the following stage, the droplet temperature remains constant, the evaporation rate and droplet diameter decrease with time. The flowfield of natural convection is also presented to demonstrate its interaction with the flame and the transient process. Finally, the fuel accumulation phenomenon is identified and it results in an reduction of evaporation constant.     

Large scale structure in gas-liquid mixture flows

Relatively slow variation in mixture void fraction in gas-liquid mixture flows are indicated by low pass filter averaging. The slow void fluctuations are found to have a regular characteristic frequency or scale in the churn flow regime or near the boundary with the dispersed bubble flow regime. These regular disturbances develop inherently in a vertical pipe flow in strength and in size and are not due to the method of flow mixing. There was no evidence of distinctive gas slugs in the flow, and the structures were identified as large clouds of bubbles which moved faster than the average velocity, growing in size and strength as they moved with the flow. The magnitude of the voidage fluctuations in the churn flow regime was on average 57% of the value for a slug flow. The large scale bubble clouds convect coherently over relatively long distances at up to 1.45 times the mean mixture flow velocity at a gas volume flow fraction of 0.4. In the bubble flow regime, the slow voidage variations were more random in scale and were only approx. 10% of the slug flow (maximum possible) value. However, even in the bubble flow regime, the disturbances convected coherently over relatively long distances at a velocity of approx. 1.1 times the mean mixture velocity.     

Modeling Turbulent Droplet Motion in Vaporizing Sprays

The present article is concerned with the influence of turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations on both droplet dispersion and droplet-gas slip velocity in the context of spray simulation. The role of turbulence in generating slip and thus enhancing interphase heat and mass transfer has so far received little attention and is investigated in this work. A model for turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations along droplet trajectories is presented and is first tuned to reproduce elementary dispersion phenomena. It is then shown to give good results for more general dispersion problems as well as for slip velocities. As a fundamental source of information and for the purpose of model validation and comparison, direct numerical simulation (DNS) of droplet motion in homogeneous isotropic steady turbulence (HIST) is used. Dispersion of “injected” droplets (i.e. droplets under the influence of drift due to high injection velocity) as well as slip velocities for linear and nonlinear droplet drag are studied, and reasonable agreement is found with the model. The distributions of the slip velocity are found to be very similar for linear and highly nonlinear drag law. The present model is also used to investigate the influence of turbulence on droplet penetration. Comparison is made with an eddy-interaction model (the KIVA-2 model), which reveals various weaknesses of this model, in particular the underprediction of average slip velocity. The influence of slip due to turbulence on vaporization is shown for a fuel spray injected into a premix gas-turbine combustor. The classical eddy-interaction model is seen to underestimate the rate of vaporization due to the underprediction of slip. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Transported PDF Modeling of Ethanol Spray in Hot-Diluted Coflow Flame

This paper presents a numerical modeling study of one ethanol spray flame from the Delft Spray-in-Hot-Coflow (DSHC) database, which has been used to study Moderate or Intense Low-oxygen Dilution (MILD) combustion of liquid fuels (Correia Rodrigues et al. Combust. Flame 162(3), 759–773, 2015). A “Lagrangian-Lagrangian” approach is adopted where both the joint velocity-scalar Probability Density Function (PDF) for the continuous phase and the joint PDF of droplet properties are modeled and solved. The evolution of the gas phase composition is described by a Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) and the interaction by exchange with the mean (IEM) micro-mixing model. Effects of finite conductivity on droplet heating and evaporation are accounted for. The inlet boundary conditions starting in the dilute spray region are obtained from the available experimental data together with the results of a calculation of the spray including the dense region using ANSYS Fluent 15. A method is developed to determine a good estimation for the initial droplet temperature. The inclusion of the “1/3” rule for droplet evaporation and dispersion models is shown to be very important. The current modeling approach is capable of accurately predicting main properties, including mean velocity, droplet mean diameter and number density. The gas temperature is under-predicted in the region where the enthalpy loss due to droplet evaporation is important. The flame structure analysis reveals the existence of two heat release regions, respectively having the characteristics of a premixed and a diffusion flame. The experimental and modeled temperature PDFs are compared, highlighting the capabilities and limitations of the proposed model.     

Producing droplets smaller than the nozzle diameter by using a pneumatic drop-on-demand droplet generator

A pneumatic droplet generator to produce water/glycerin droplets smaller than the nozzle diameter is described. The generator consists of a T-junction with a nozzle fit into one opening, the second opening connected to a gas cylinder through a solenoid valve and the third connected to a length of steel tubing. The droplet generator is filled with liquid. Opening the valve for a preset time creates a pulse of alternating negative and positive pressure in the gas above the surface of the liquid, ejecting a single droplet through the nozzle. Droplet formation was photographed and the pressure variation in the droplet generator recorded. The effect of various experimental parameters, such as nozzle size, pressure pulse width and liquid properties on droplet formation was investigated. Small droplets could not be generated when liquid viscosity was too low or too high. For pure water, droplet diameters were several times that of the nozzle. Using more viscous glycerin mixtures, droplets with diameters as small as 65% of the nozzle diameter could be produced.     

Large Eddy Simulation of Low Swirl Flames Under External Flow Excitations

Low swirl flame characteristics under external flow excitations are numerically investigated using large eddy simulations with a dynamically thickened flame combustion model. A finite volume scheme on a Cartesian grid with a dynamic one equation eddy viscosity subgrid scale model is used for large eddy simulations. The excitations are imposed on inlet velocity profiles by a sinusoidal forcing function over a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies. Present investigation shows that although, the swirling motion of the low swirl flame is not intense enough to induce a recirculation zone in ensemble averaged results, external flow excitations increase the local swirl number upstream of the flame front. Such increase in the local swirl number is at maximum value when the low swirl flame is excited at the dominant frequency of the flow field, which in turn induces a vortex breakdown and hence a central recirculation zone. The strength and size of the time averaged recirculation zone depend on both the amplitude and frequency of the excitations. Moreover, phase-locked results indicate that external flow excitations induce local swirl fluctuations ahead of the flame front which alter the strength of the recirculation zone at different phase angles of the excitations.     

超声速气流中雾化燃料喷射的三维数值研究

首次用双流体模型对雾化燃料在扩张形超燃室中沿九喷嘴顺流喷射的混合问题进行了数值研究。气相用迎风 TVD格式求解三维全 Navier- Stokes方程 ,液相用预估、校正 NND格式求解三维 Euler方程。相间相互作用的常微分方程用预估、校正Runge- Kutta法求解。用三维 Poisson方程生成网格。结果表明 :气相较液相的扩散效果好 ,小直径液滴的扩散效果好。相间速度滑移、改变气相喷射压力和喷射速度对液相扩散的贡献不大 ,但调整喷射角度会明显地增强液相的扩散、混合 ,本文结果未出现阻塞。     

Influence of heat and mass transfer on the ignition and NOx formation in single droplet combustion

The effect of heat and mass transfer on the ignition, and in a second step on the nitrogen oxide (NO _x ) generation, of single burning droplets is examined in a numerical study. Spherical symmetry with no gravity and no forced convection is presumed; ambient temperature is set at 500 K, below the auto-ignition point. The essentials of a forced droplet ignition by an external energy source are introduced. Two methods are applied: heat introduction at a fixed radial position r and heat introduction at a fixed local equivalence ratio ϕ _r . This study’s distinctiveness compared to previous research is its focus on and its combination of partially pre-vaporized droplets and detailed chemistry, both being technically relevant in kerosene and diesel fuel combustion. The fuel of choice is n-decane (C₁₀H₂₂), and NO _x production is studied exemplarily as a representative group of pollutant emissions. The conducted simulations show a decrease of NO _x formation with an increase of the pre-vaporization rate \Uppsi. \Uppsi. This decrease is generally valid for both methods of heat introduction. However, results on flame stabilization and NO _x production reveal a high sensitivity to parameters of the ignition model. The burning behavior during the initial stages is dominated by the ignition position. Extracting heat from the exhaust gas region of burning droplets shows no impact on the flame position nor on the relative NO _x production. As a consequence, a well-founded modeling of the investigated droplet regime needs to resort to an iterative adaptation of the heat introduction parameters based on the findings of droplet burning and exhaust gas production.     

Effects of fuel properties on the burning characteristics of collision-merged alkane/water droplets

The combustion characteristics of freely falling droplets, individually generated by the merging of colliding alkane and water droplets, were experimentally investigated. The outcome of the collision droplets was firstly studied and then the subsequent burning processes such as the flame appearance, ignition and burning behaviors were recorded, through either visual observation or microphotography with the aid of stroboscopic lightening. If the merged droplets were exhibited in an insertive manner, while the water droplet inserted into the alkane droplet, these yield the burning behaviors prior to the end of flame were very much similar to that of pure alkane. The burning was ended with droplet extinction for lower-C alkane, and with either droplet “flash vaporization” or extinction for hexadecane. And if the merged droplets were in adhesive manner, for hexadecane with large water content, they either could not be ignited for the large merged droplets, or be ignited with a much prolonged ignition delay, followed by a soot-reducing flame and an ending of droplet extinction for the small merged droplets. “Homogeneous” explosion was not observed in any of the tests, and “heterogeneous” explosion, induced by trapped air bubbles, occasionally occurred for merged droplets with C-atom in alkane is higher than dodecane. And the sudden disappearance of droplet definitely decreased the burning time and thus enhanced the burning intensity. Besides, the fuel mass consumption rates were increased, even in the cases that having droplet extinction, because of the enlargement of the surface area due to the stuffing of water droplet.