Flame Curvature Distribution in High Pressure Turbulent Bunsen Premixed Flames

The flame curvature statistics of turbulent premixed Bunsen flames have been analysed in this paper using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) database of turbulent Bunsen flames at ambient and elevated pressures. In order to be able to perform a large parametric study in terms of pressure, heat release parameter, turbulence conditions and nozzle diameter, a single step Arrhenius type irreversible chemistry has been used for the purpose of computational economy, where thermo-chemical parameters are adjusted to match the behavior of stoichiometric methane-air flames. This analysis focuses on the characterization of the local flame geometry in response to turbulence and hydro-dynamic instability. The shape of the flame front is found to be consistent with existing experimental data. Although the Darrieus Landau instability promotes cusp formation, a qualitatively similar flame morphology can be observed for hydro-dynamically stable flames. A criterion has been suggested for the curvature PDF to become negatively skewed.     

Turbulent Flame Speeds of Premixed Supersonic Flame Kernels

It is unclear whether turbulent flame speed scalings established in low speed regimes are applicable to supersonic flames. To investigate this question, the canonical flame kernel is investigated in a scramjet-like channel having a one degree wall divergence. The growth, shape and internal kernel dynamics are investigated. Results are presented for three Mach numbers, four equivalence ratios, and three turbulence generators. Schlieren photography provides flame images for growth rate statistics and particle image velocimetry (PIV) provides turbulence statistics and investigation of internal kernel dynamics. Supersonic flame kernels are self-propagating and respond to the equivalence ratio in a fashion that is similar to low speed flames. However, supersonic flame kernels have features that are not present in subsonic flame kernels. Baroclinicity, resulting from pressure-density misalignment, creates a reacting vortex ring structure. Further, the mean kernel shape has a Mach number dependence and the vortex ring enhances the turbulent flame speed through entrainment of reactants and augmented flame surface growth. Hence, the previously established (low speed) flame speed scalings are inappropriate for supersonic flame kernels. Drawing motivation from vortex ring literature, the ring propagation velocity is used as the characteristic velocity and a new flame speed scaling is proposed.     

Modelling of a Premixed Swirl-stabilized Flame Using a Turbulent Flame Speed Closure Model in LES

This paper proposes a combustion model based on a turbulent flame speed closure (TFC) technique for large eddy simulation (LES) of premixed flames. The model was originally developed for the RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations) approach and was extended here to LES. The turbulent quantities needed for calculation of the turbulent flame speed are obtained at the sub grid level. This model was at first experienced via an test case and then applied to a typical industrial combustor with a swirl stabilized flame. The paper shows that the model is easy to apply and that the results are promising. Even typical frequencies of arising combustion instabilities can be captured. But, the use of compressible LES may also lead to unphysical pressure waves which have their origin in the numerical treatment of the boundary conditions.     

LES of Premixed Flame Propagation in a Free Straight Vortex

The paper presents experimental and numerical investigations of flame propagation in a free straight vortex which is formed by a movable block swirl generation device. PIV was used to characterize the isothermal flow experimentally and high speed video films were used to gain informations on the flame propagation.     

The Scalar Gradient Alignment Statistics of Flame Kernels and its Modelling Implications for Turbulent Premixed Combustion

The effects of mean flame curvature on reaction progress variable gradient, $\nabla c$ , alignment with local turbulent strain rate are studied based on three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data of turbulent premixed flame kernels with different initial radii under decaying turbulence. A statistically planar flame is also considered in order to compare the results obtained from the kernels with a flame of zero mean curvature. It is found that the dilatation rate effects diminish with decreasing kernel radius due to defocusing of heat in the positively curved regions. This gives rise to a decrease in the extent of reaction progress variable gradient alignment with most extensive principal strain rate with decreasing kernel radius. The modelling implications of the statistics of the alignment of $\nabla c$ with local strain rate have been studied in terms of scalar dissipation rate transport. A new modelling methodology for the contribution of the scalar-turbulence interaction term in the transport equation for the mean scalar dissipation is suggested addressing the reduced effects of dilatation rate for flame kernels and the diminished value of turbulent straining at the small length scales at which turbulence interacts with small flame kernels. The performance of the new models is found to be satisfactory while comparing to DNS results. The existing models for the dilatation contribution and the combined chemical reaction and molecular dissipation contributions to the transport of mean scalar dissipation, which were originally proposed for statistically planar flames, are found to satisfactorily predict the corresponding quantities for turbulent flame kernels.     

Large Eddy Simulation of a Propagating Turbulent Premixed Flame

A large eddy simulation of a turbulent premixed flame propagatingthrough a chamber containing a square obstruction is presented anddiscussed. The governing equations for compressible, reacting flowsare Favre filtered and turbulence closure is achieved using thedynamic Smagorinsky subgrid model. A simple flame surface densitymodel based on the flamelet concept is employed for the subgrid scalereaction rate. The simulation gives very good agreement with experimentalresults for the speed and the shape of the flame as it propagates throughthe chamber. The peak pressures, however, are underpredicted by20–30%. Reasons for this are discussed and it is concluded that amore sophisticated combustion model is required for complex flowssuch as this one, if a more accurate prediction of the pressureis to be achieved.     

Heat Transfer Effects on a Fully Premixed Methane Impinging Flame

A numerical assessment of different thermal conditions for an impinging flame configuration is investigated using large-eddy simulation. The cases of study correspond to a turbulent methane flame at equivalence ratio ER = 0.8 and temperature T = 298 K exiting at 30 m/s with a nozzle-to-plate distance over diameter of H/D = 2. Computational cases based on different thermal conditions are compared to a conjugate case, in which fluid and solid domains are solved simultaneously. A solid material defined with enhanced conductivity properties is used to represent the wall in the conjugate case, so that the characteristic time scales of the solid are reduced. The results indicate that the heat transfer condition influences not only the mean temperature and gradients, but also the temperature fluctuations in the near-wall region. It is found that adiabatic, isothermal and more sophisticated Robin-type boundary conditions contribute to underpredict/overpredict the temperature field near the wall. As the time scales of fluid and solid are of the same order, the use of conjugate approaches is required to predict the correct flow fields near the wall and the skin temperature.     

Flame Surface Density in Turbulent Premixed V-Flame with Buoyancy

A fractional step numerical model is established for turbulent premixed combustion with buoyancy. The flame front propagation is described by the level-set method. Simulated results without buoyancy have been previously validated with available experimental data on a premixed V-flame. A new formula is presented to fit the flame surface density with respect to the reaction progress variable in a turbulent premixed V-flame. By numerical simulations, dynamical behaviour of the flame under the interaction of turbulence, exothermicity and buoyancy are investigated.     

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.     

The Flow Structure Produced by Pulsed-jet Vortex Generators in a Turbulent Boundary Layer in an Adverse Pressure Gradient

The effect of pulsed jet vortex generators on the structure of an adverse pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer flow was investigated. Two geometrically optimised vortex generator configurations were used, co-rotating and counter-rotating. The duty cycle and pulse frequency were both varied and measurements of the skin friction (using hot films) and flow structure (using stereo PIV) were performed downstream of the actuators. The augmentation of the mean wall shear stress was found to be dependent on the net mass flow injected by the actuators. A quasi steady flow structure was found to develop far downstream of the injection location for the highest pulse frequency tested. The actuator near field flow structure was observed to respond very quickly to variations in the jet exit velocity.     

LES-CMC of a Partially Premixed,Turbulent Dimethyl Ether Jet Diffusion Flame

Large-eddy simulations have been coupled with a conservative formulation of the conditional moment closure (CMC) approach for the computation of a turbulent, partially-premixed dimethyl-ether jet flame. Two different numerical setups and 3 different detailed chemical mechanisms were investigated. The results are compared with measurements of velocity, temperature, and major and intermediate species. The general agreement between simulations and experiments is very good, and differences between the different mechanisms are limited to the predicted concentrations of intermediates only. Larger differences can be observed if the CMC grid size is reduced. This is due to reduced averaging effects on the conditionally averaged dissipation rates that allow to better capture high dissipation events that lead to larger deviations from a fully burning solution. A high CMC resolution provides excellent agreement with experiments throughout the flame and the results demonstrate CMC’s capability to accurately predict turbulence-chemistry interactions in partially-premixed flames involving complex chemistry.     

Large Eddy Simulation of a Bluff Body Stabilised Premixed Flame Using Flamelets

Large Eddy Simulations of an unconfined turbulent lean premixed flame, which is stabilised behind a bluff body, are conducted using unstrained flamelets as the sub-grid scale combustion closure. The statistics from the simulations are compared with the corresponding data obtained from the experiment and it is demonstrated that the experimental observations are well captured. The relative positioning of the shear layers and the flame brush are analysed to understand the radial variations of the turbulent kinetic energy at various streamwise locations. These results are also compared to confined bluff body stabilised flames, to shed light on the relative role of incoming and shear driven turbulence on the behaviour of the flame brush and the turbulent kinetic energy variation across it.     

An Empirical Wall Law for the Mean Velocity in an Adverse Pressure Gradient for RANS Turbulence Modelling

Flow, Turbulence and Combustion - An empirical wall law for the mean velocity in an adverse pressure gradient is presented, with the ultimate goal of aiming at the improvement of RANS turbulence...     

Effects of the Local Flow Topologies Upon the Structure of a Premixed Methane-air Turbulent Jet Flame

Local flow topologies have been identified and their interactions with the iso-scalar surfaces geometries have been investigated using the results of a three-dimensional direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a turbulent premixed methane-air flame in a piloted Bunsen burner configuration with tabulated chemistry. The universal teardrop shape of the joint probability density function (jpdf) of the second and third invariants of the velocity-gradient tensor disappears in the different flame regions under study. A ‘canonical’ vortex, which affects the fine-scale structure of the turbulent premixed flame, has been identified and analyzed at three times, differing by increments of the order of the Kolmogorov time micro-scale.     

Interactions Between Flame Topology and Turbulent Transport in High-Pressure Premixed Combustion

Flow, Turbulence and Combustion - Direct numerical simulations of a turbulent premixed stoichiometric methane-oxygen flame were conducted. The chosen combustion pressure was 20 bar, to...     

Evaluations of SGS Combustion,Scalar Flux and Stress Models in a Turbulent Jet Premixed Flame

A newly developed fractal dynamic SGS (FDSGS) combustion model and a scale self-recognition mixed (SSRM) SGS stress model are evaluated along with other SGS combustion, scalar flux and stress models in a priori and a posteriori manners using DNS data of a hydrogen-air turbulent plane jet premixed flame. A posteriori tests reveal that the LES using the FDSGS combustion model can predict the combustion field well in terms of mean temperature distributions and peak positions in the transverse distributions of filtered reaction progress variable fluctuations. A priori and a posteriori tests of the scalar flux models show that a model proposed by Clark et al. accurately predicts the counter-gradient transport as well as the gradient diffusion, and introduction of the model of Clark et al. into the LES yields slightly better predictions of the filtered progress variable fluctuations than that of a gradient diffusion model. Evaluations of the stress models reveal that the LES with the SSRM model predicts the velocity fluctuations well compared to that with the Smagorinsky model.     

Bluff-body Thermal Property and Initial State Effects on a Laminar Premixed Flame Anchoring Pattern

Bluff-body stabilized laminar flames remain at the root of many industrial applications. Such a simple flame arrangement although steady results from complex chemical, flow mixing as well as solid body thermal interactions that are still today misunderstood. Numerically, accurate predictions of such non linear problems require Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) approaches that are seldom because of the need for complex fluid flow solvers as well as multi-physics coupling strategies that are computationally expensive and difficult to master. Such numerical tools however provide access to fundamental elements otherwise inaccessible. Relying on Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) CHT based predictions, the following work underlines several key features of importance to predict and understand square bluff-body stabilized flames. In the case of fluid only predictions, where the bluff-body wall temperature is fixed and assumed constant, three possible flame topologies are obtained and respectively qualified as anchored, lifted and bowed flames. Out of these three stable flow solutions, only two topologies are found physically possible whenever computed in a CHT context. Furthermore, depending on the solid material and the initial solution, the non linear CHT problem exhibits multiple solutions highlighting the complex coupling that can arise. As evidenced by these simple flame problems, such a behavior higlights the potential difficulties of predicting flame wall interaction problems where coupling schemes and turbulent closures / modeling will be required.     

Towards the Development of an Evolution Equation for Flame Turbulence Interaction in Premixed Turbulent Combustion

Flame turbulence interaction is one of the leading order terms in the scalar dissipation \(\left (\widetilde {\varepsilon }_{c}\right )\) transport equation [35] and is thus an important phenomenon in premixed turbulent combustion. Swaminathan and Grout [36] and Chakraborty and Swaminathan [15, 16] have shown that the effect of strain rate on the transport of \(\widetilde {\varepsilon }_{c}\) is dominated by the interaction between the fluctuating scalar gradients and the fluctuating strain rate, denoted here by \(\overline {\rho }\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}= \overline {\rho {\alpha }\nabla c^{\prime \prime }S_{ij}^{\prime \prime }\nabla c^{\prime \prime }}\) ; this represents the flame turbulence interaction. In order to obtain an accurate representation of this phenomenon, a new evolution equation for \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) has been proposed. This equation gives a detailed insight into flame turbulence interaction and provides an alternative approach to model the important physics represented by \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) . The \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) evolution equation is derived in detail and an order of magnitude analysis is carried out to determine the leading order terms in the \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) evolution equation. The leading order terms are then studied using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of premixed turbulent flames in the corrugated flamelet regime. It is found that the behaviour of \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) is determined by the competition between the source terms (pressure gradient and the reaction rate), diffusion/dissipation processes, turbulent strain rate and the dilatation rate. Closures for the leading order terms in \(\widetilde {\Delta }_{c}\) evolution equation have been proposed and compared with the DNS data.     

Acoustically Induced Flashback in a Staged Swirl-Stabilized Combustor

This paper describes a joint experimental and numerical investigation of the interaction between thermoacoustics and flashback mechanisms in a swirled turbulent burner. An academic air/propane combustor terminated by a choked nozzle is operated up to 2.5 bars. Experiments show that the flame can stabilize either within the combustion chamber or flashback inside the injection duct, intermittently or permanently. The present study focuses on the mechanisms leading to flashback: this phenomenon can occur naturally, depending on the swirl level which can be adjusted in the experiment by introducing axial flow through the upstream inlet. It can also be triggered by acoustic waves, either through acoustic forcing or self-excited thermoacoustic instability. Flashback is difficult to study experimentally, but it can be investigated numerically using LES: in a first configuration, the outlet of the chamber is treated as a non-reflecting surface through which harmonic waves can be introduced. In this case, a 20 kPa acoustic forcing is sufficient to trigger permanent flashback after a few cycles. When the LES computational domain includes the choked nozzle used experimentally, no forcing is needed for flashback to occur. Self-excited oscillations reach high levels rapidly, leading to flame flashback, as observed experimentally. These results also suggest a simple method to avoid flashback by using fuel staging, which is then tested successfully in both LES and experiments.