The Effect of Diluent on the Sustainability of MILD Combustion in a Cyclonic Burner

The present study investigates the characteristics of MILD/flameless combustion in a cyclonic lab-scale burner. Such a configuration is effective for achieving turbulent mixing in a very short time while allowing for a reasonably long residence time for the development of combustion reactions. These two constraints are mandatory in the case of MILD combustion processes (high inlet temperatures and diluted mixtures). Such operating conditions are achieved through massive heat/mass recirculation towards the fresh incoming mixtures by recycling the exhausted gases, featuring a process where chemical kinetics times are elongated because of the dilution levels. Thus, long residence times are needed to achieve a satisfying reaction progress, and the high inlet temperatures result in fast and efficient mixing between disproportionate flows to avoid the onset of oxidation reactions before achieving diluted conditions. Under these constraints, a lab-scale facility was designed and built. The oxidation processes of C₃H₈/O₂ mixtures highly diluted in N₂ or CO₂ were investigated by varying the external parameters of the system, namely, the inlet temperature (up to 1300 K) and the mixture composition (from lean to rich mixtures). Several combustion regimes were experimentally identified. When the MILD regime was established, the combustion process became homogeneous within the burner without luminous emissions. To investigate the distributed nature of the MILD combustion processes, chemical simulations were performed under the assumption of a well-stirred reactor. For both the diluents, good agreement between the experimental and numerical results was obtained for MILD combustion conditions.     

Numerical Simulation of Pulverized Coal MILD Combustion Using a New Heterogeneous Combustion Submodel

The scope of this investigation is the application and analysis of a recently developed submodel (Schulze et al., Oil Gas Science Technol, 2013, doi:10.2516/ogst/2012069) for char particle combustion and gasification. The distinguishing feature of this model is a detailed representation of the diffusion and convection processes as well as the homogeneous reactions in the boundary layer around the char particle. These processes are fully coupled to the heterogeneous particle kinetics. The model was implemented into the CFD code ANSYS-Fluent. The coupled solver is used for simulating the IFRF full scale pulverized coal combustion MILD furnace, for which detailed experimental data are available for model evaluation (Orsino et al., IFRF Doc. No F46/y/3, 2000) The new model yields improved agreement with measured data as compared to the standard modeling approach. This can be directly related to the prediction of the char burnout rate. For further analysis, the mixing field in the IFRF furnace is investigated in detail by introducing four mixture fractions for pyrolysis products, char burn-off gases, primary and secondary air, respectively. The solutions of the respective transport equations are used to define the local stoichiometry both in the gas phase and on the particle surface in such a multi-stream system. The conditions in the particle surrounding gas phase as well as on the particle surface are used to define the regime of particle-gas interaction based on the simulations with the new submodel. It can be shown that for certain conditions the homogeneous reactions in the particle boundary must be accounted for.     

A Numerical Investigation of a Modified Couette-Taylor Apparatus with Application to Industrial Mixing

The results of numerical researches of laminar fluid flow, evolution of the passive impurity and small solid particles in a modified Taylor flow are presented. The fluid medium moves between undulating surfaces of a rotor and a fixed body. The dependence of the flow field on the Reynolds number and geometrical parameters of the rotor and body surfaces is explored. The possibility of using similar kinds of flows in industrial devices for mixing, suspension and emulsification is considered. Received 5 December 2001 and accepted 29 March 2002 Published online 2 October 2002 Communicated by H.J.S. Fernando     

贯流风机流场的实验和数值研究

贯流风机流场的分析研究是对其进行结构调整、性能优化的前提。本文运用烟迹和闪光照相的方法对贯流风机的内部流动进行了流场显示研究，得到了瞬态流场照片，并通过多点总压和静压测量得到了速度分布。本文还对贯流风机的流场进行了数值模拟。结果表明：数值计算与实验结果符合得较好，这两者的结合是研究贯流风机流动和改进其性能的有效手段。本文最后就贯流风机的噪声进行了初步研究，得出了一些有价值的结果。     

Modeling of Liquid Fuel Injection, Evaporation and Mixing in a Gas Turbine Burner Using Large Eddy Simulations

The interaction of turbulence, temperature fluctuation, liquid fuel transport, mixing and evaporation is studied by using Large Eddy Simulations (LES). To assess the accuracy of the different components of the methods we consider first isothermal, single phase flow in a straight duct. The results using different numerical methods incorporating dynamic Sub-Grid-Scale (SGS) models are compared with DNS and experimental data. The effects of the interactions among turbulence, temperature fluctuation, spray transport, evaporation and mixing of the gaseous fuel are studied by using different assumptions on the temperature field. It has been found that there are strong non-linear interactions among temperature-fluctuation, evaporation and turbulent mixing which require additional modeling if not full LES is used. The developed models and methods have been applied to a gas turbine burner into which liquid fuel is injected. The dispersion of the droplets in the burner is described. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mixing and Bimolecular Reaction Kinetics in a Plane Poisseulle Flow

Mixing and a nonlinear bimolecular chemical reaction (reactant A + reactant B → product; reaction rate r?=?κc ₁ c ₂) in laminar shear flow are investigated. It is found that asymptotically the dominant balance between the rates of production and dissipation of the mean-squared concentration fluctuations \((\sigma_{c_1 }^2 ,\sigma_{c_2 }^2)\) and cross-covariance of concentration fluctuations \((\overline {c_1 c_2 })\) occurs under nonreactive and reactive conditions. Longitudinal dispersion of the cross-sectional averages (C ₁, C ₂), and variances and the cross-covariance of reactant concentrations can be asymptotically quantified by the classic Taylor dispersion coefficient (D) even under reactive conditions. The characteristic time-scale (τ) over which molecular diffusion dissipates concentration variance and the cross-covariance of reactant concentrations is also shown to be the same under nonreactive and reactive conditions. A variational estimate of τ is shown to be close to the values inferred from detailed numerical simulation. The production-dissipation balance implies that the cross-sectional averaged reaction rate follows \(\overline r =\kappa_{eff} C_1 C_2 \) and \(\kappa _{eff} \approx \kappa \left[ {1+2D\tau \left( {{\partial \ln C_1 } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{\partial \ln C_1 } {\partial x}}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} {\partial x}} \right)\left( {{\partial \ln C_2 } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{\partial \ln C_2 } {\partial x}}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} {\partial x}} \right)} \right]\). The effective reaction rate parameter (κ _eff ) is higher than that of well-mixed batch test reaction rate constant (κ) for initially overlapping species and κ _eff is smaller than κ for initially non-overlapping species.     

Subgrid Linear Eddy Mixing and Combustion Modelling of a Turbulent Nonpremixed Piloted Jet Flame

A linear eddy model for subgrid mixing and combustion has been coupled to a large eddy simulation of the turbulent nonpremixed piloted jet flame (Sandia Flame D). For the combustion reaction, simplified, single-step, irreversible, Arrhenius kinetics are used. The large scale and the subgrid structure of the flow are compared with experimental observations and, where appropriate, with a flamelet model of the flame. The main objective of this work is to demonstrate the feasibility of the LES-LEM approach for determining the structure of the subgrid scalar dissipation rate and the turbulence-chemistry interactions. The results for the large- and subgrid-scale structure of the flow show a reasonable agreement with the experimental observations.     

Numerical Investigation on Marginal Stability and Convection with and without Magnetic Field in a Mushy Layer

In this article, an investigation is conducted to analyze the marginal stability with and without magnetic field in a mushy layer. During alloy solidification, such mushy layer, which is adjacent to the solidification front and composed of solid dendrites and liquid, is known to produce vertical chimneys. Here, we carry out numerical investigation for particular range of parameter values, which cover those of available experimental studies, to determine the convective flow at the onset of motion. The governing coupled non-linear partial differential equations are non-dimensionalised and solved to get the steady basic-state solution. The thickness of the mushy layer is determined as a part of the solution. Using multiple shooting technique, we determine the steady-state solutions in a range of critical Rayleigh number. We analyse the effect of several parameters, Chandrasekhar number Q, and Robert’s number τ on the problem. It was found that an increase in Q has a stabilizing effect on solidification and the critical Rayleigh number increases on increasing Q. It was also found that for moderate or small values of Robert’s number τ the critical Rayleigh number is mostly insensitive.     

Mach Wave Radiation by Mixing Layers. Part I: Analysis of the Sound Field

In Part I a wave packet model is used to show that a time-developing mixing layer produces a Mach wave pattern similar to the one produced by a spatial-developing mixing layer. However, this kind of similarity does not exist for the sound emitted by subsonic sound sources. A method to analyse temporal direct numerical simulation (DNS) results for the Mach wave pattern is then developed and demonstrated using numerical results of the wave-packet model. The method is applied to the temporal DNS results of a supersonic mixing layer undergoing transition to turbulence. Two dominant Mach waves are revealed. The first wave originates from about the time of the Λ-vortex structure dominance in the layer. The second wave appears just prior to the final breakdown of the layer to a fine-scale turbulence structure. The second wave shows a higher level of a finite-amplitude wave behaviour and a smaller-scale source structure than the first wave. Directivity plots and frequency spectra are provided and discussed. Received 5 August 1997 and accepted 6 April 1998     

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.     

Mach Wave Radiation by Mixing Layers. Part II: Analysis of the Source Field

In Part II a large-scale sound source in a time-developing planar free mixing layer is studied using an acoustic analogy approach. It is shown that only the non-compact character of the source resembles well the character of the corresponding source in a spatially developing flow. A model based on a continuous assembly of wave packets is derived and applied to direct numerical simulation results of two supersonic time-developing mixing layers undergoing transition to turbulence. The analysis predicts two distinctive dominant Mach wave sources in agreement with the direct analysis of Part~I. The first dominates during the stage of the Λ-vortex structure and the second just prior to the final breakdown to a fine-scale structure. The convective velocity of the second Mach wave source is higher than the first and thus its Mach angle of radiation is higher. The second source has a reduced strength at the higher free-stream Mach number. Directivity and frequency spectra compare well with the results of Part I, demonstrating that the assumptions inherent in the analogy are quite reasonable. Received 5 August 1997 and accepted 6 April 1998     

3D Numerical Simulation of a Laminar Experimental SWQ Burner with Tabulated Chemistry

Flame-wall interaction (FWI) plays an important role in enclosed combustion systems. For avoiding the complexity of close to reality combustors, in this study an atmospheric premixed V-shaped flame interacting with an isothermal cold wall in a side wall quenching (SWQ) configuration is investigated. A stoichiometric methane/air mixture is used as fuel. A three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulation, which resolves all flow structures is combined with a tabulated chemistry approach (flamelet generated manifold, FGM). Results are compared with experimental data and two-dimensional simulations. The FGM approach is a suitable trade-off between computationally expensive detailed chemistry simulations and over simplified single step mechanisms. 2D simulations are used to investigate the influence of the uncertainty of the wall temperature, to show that the resolution in 3D is sufficient and that the influence of the flame thickening on the wall heat fluxes can be determined. Our results show that the 3D FGM approach is in close agreement to experimentally obtained flow and temperature fields. The dimensionless wall heat flux and Péclet number matches the expected values of 0.16 and 7, respectively. However, during FWI the measured CO mole fractions are not reproduced accurately showing that the transported variables in the present approach of tabulated chemistry do not recover premixed flame structures near walls.     

Modeling and Simulation of Effects of Turbulence on Vaporization, Mixing and Combustion of Liquid-Fuel Sprays

The objective of this work is twofold. Firstly, the effects of turbulence intensity variations on the turbulent droplet dispersion, vaporization and mixing for non-reacting sprays (with and without swirl) are pointed out. Secondly, the effects of the coupling of the turbulence modulation with external parameters, such as swirl intensity, on turbulent spray combustion are analyzed in configurations of engineering importance. This is achieved by using advanced models for turbulence, evaporation and turbulence modulation implemented into FASTEST-LAG3D-codes: (1) To highlight the influence of turbulence modulation on some spray properties, a thermodynamically consistent modulation model has been considered besides the standard assumption and the well known Crowe's model. For turbulent droplet dispersion, we rely on the Markov-sequence formulation. (2) In order to characterize phase transition processes ongoing on droplets surfaces, a non-equilibrium evaporation model shows better agreement with experiments in comparison with the quasi-equilibrium-based evaporation models often used. (3) The results of turbulence intensity variations reveal the existence of a limited range out of which the increase or decrease of the turbulence intensity affects no more the efficiency of the heat and mass transfer. A derived characteristic number, a vaporization Damkhöler number, possesses a critical value which separates two different behavior regimes with respect to the turbulence/droplet vaporization interactions. (4) Under reacting conditions, it is shown how the evaporation characteristics, mixing rate and combustion process are strongly influenced by swirl intensity and turbulence modulation. In particular, the turbulence modulation modifies the evaporation rate, which in turn influences the mixing and the species concentration distribution. In the case under investigation, it is demonstrated that this effect cannot be neglected for low swirl intensities (Sw.Nu. ≤ 1) in the region far from the nozzle, and close to the nozzle for high swirl number intensities. In providing these particular characteristics, a reliable control of the mixing of gaseous fuel and air in evaporating and reacting sprays, and a possible optimization of the mixing process can tentatively be achieved.     

Quantitative Analysis of Flame Instabilities in a Hele-Shaw Burner

We show in this paper that a Hele-Shaw burner can be used for studying the development of premixed flame instabilities in a quasi-two dimensional configuration. It is possible to ignite a plane flame at the top of the cell, and to measure quantitatively the growth rates of the instability by image analysis. Experiments are performed with propane and methane-air mixtures. It is found that the most unstable wavelength, and the maximum linear growth rate of perturbations, directly measured in the present experiments, have the same order of magnitude as those previously measured on flames propagating freely downwards in wide tubes.     

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.     

磁流体动力学斜激波控制数值模拟分析

高超声速飞行器MHD(磁流体动力学)斜激波控制应用的关键在于理解等离子体斜激波流场与磁场的相互作用规律,这里发展了全MHD数值模拟方法对其进行研究,数值方法基于八波方程附加源项形式,进行有限体积离散,采用了Roe求解器、OC-TVD空间格式和LU-SGS方法,且采用投影方法降低磁场伪散度误差.考察外加均匀磁场的马赫10无粘导电拐角流动,压缩角为10°.结果中散度误差较低,并且通过激波参数验证了结果的准确性.流场显示,磁场使得激波角增大,部分情况下出现了快、慢激波结构,其中快激波变化更明显;壁面压强根据磁场的不同出现了不同程度的降低.最后采用群速度图方法进行了快慢激波形式分析,解释了磁场影响下流场形式变化机理.     

Vortex-In-Cell and Probability Density Function Approach for a Passive Scalar Field in a Mixing Layer

A Reynolds-averaged simulation based on the vortex-in-cell (VIC) and the transport equation for the probability density function (PDF) of a scalar has been developed to predict the passive scalar field in a two-dimensional spatially growing mixing layer. The VIC computes the instantaneous velocity and vorticity fields. Then the mean-flow properties, i.e. the mean velocity, the root-mean-square (rms) longitudinal and lateral velocity fluctuations, the Reynolds shear stress, and the rms vorticity fluctuations are computed and used as input to the PDF equation. The PDF transport equation is solved using the Monte Carlo technique. The convection term uses the mean velocities from the VIC. The turbulent diffusion term is modeled using the gradient transport model, in which the eddy diffusivity, computed via the Boussinesq's postulate, uses the Reynolds shear stress and gradients of mean velocities from the VIC. The molecular mixing term is closed by the modified Curl model.

The computational results were compared with two-dimensional experimental results for passive scalar. The predicted turbulent flow characteristics, i.e. mean velocity and rms longitudinal fluctuations in the self-preserving region, show good agreement with the experimental measurements. The profiles of the mean scalar and the rms scalar fluctuations are also in reasonable agreement with the experimental measurements. Comparison between the mean scalar and the mean velocity profiles shows that the scalar mixing region extends further into the free stream than does the momentum mixing region, indicating enhanced transport of scalar over momentum. The rms scalar profiles exhibit an asymmetry relative to the concentration centerline, and indicate that the fluid on the high-speed side mixes at a faster rate than the fluid on the low-speed side. The asymmetry is due to the asymmetry in the mixing frequency cross-stream profiles. Also, the PDFs have peaks biased toward the high-speed side.     

自主攻击水雷发射流场分析与数值仿真

本文采用有限体积法，对自主攻击水雷开盖前在发射平台内产生的燃气喷射流场进行了数值计算，结合算例给出了发射平台底部反向板、壁面以及雷体表现的压力、温度分布曲线。对照实验结果，说明本文数值方法是正确的，同时也显示了数值计算结果对水雷发射平台筒体、反射板结构强度和刚度的高度，以及如何消除雷体环境条件的不利因素具有重要的指导意义和参考价值。