Simulation of Dilute Acetone Spray Flames with LES-CMC Using Two Conditional Moments

Large-eddy simulations (LES) have been coupled with a conditional moment closure (CMC) method for the computation of a series of turbulent spray flames. An earlier study by Ukai et al. (Proc. Combust. Inst. 34(1),1643–1650, 2013) gave reasonable results for the prediction of temperature and velocity profiles, but some limitations of the method became apparent. These limitations are primarily related to the upper limit in mixture fraction space. In order to enhance the applicability of the LES-CMC model, this paper proposes a two-conditional moment approach to account for the existence of pre-evaporated fuel by introducing two sets of conditional moments based on different mixture fractions. The two-conditional moment approach is first tested for a non-reacting test case. The results indicate that the spray evaporation induces relatively large conditional fluctuations within a CMC cell, and one set of conditional moments might not be sufficient. The upper limit of the mixture fraction space is dynamically selected for the solution of the second set of conditional moments, and the corresponding CMC solution in a CFD cell is estimated by interpolation between the two conditional moments weighted by the amount of vapour emitted within the domain. The cell-filtered value is given by integration of the conditional moment across mixture fraction space using a bounded β-FDF for the distribution of the scalar. As a result, the fuel concentration profiles given by LES and the two-conditional moment approach are shown to agree well. Then, the two-conditional moment approach is applied to four different flame configurations. The comparison of LES cell quantities and conditionally averaged moments indicates that the two sets of conditional moments are necessary for accurate predictions in zones where gas phase mixture fraction is significantly increased by droplet evaporation within the computational domain. The unconditional temperature profiles clearly show that the new approach improves the predictions of mean temperature especially along the centerline. Also, the better predictions of the temperature field improve the accuracy of the predicted mean axial droplet velocities. Overall, good agreement with the experimental results is found for all four cases, and the methodology is shown to be applicable to flames with a relatively wide range of fuel vapour concentrations.     

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.     

Numerical Simulation of Diesel Particulate Filter Regeneration Considering Ash Deposit

Non-combustible ash can be deposited on channel walls through the full length of a diesel particulate filter (DPF). This type of ash can affect the exhaust condition and heat transfer process during the periodical soot regeneration of DPF. A model of soot regeneration is established in this paper to describe the effects of ash deposits on exhaust condition and heat transfer. Mass, momentum, and energy balances are considered for the multiphase system of gas, soot, and wall. The good agreement with experimental data confirms that the model is able to describe the processes. The axial patterns of wall temperature and soot regeneration rate during DPF regeneration are investigated by numerical simulation. Results indicate that the deposited ash layer reduces the exhaust flow rate and increases the heat conduction resistance during DPF regeneration, thus leading to high wall temperature and soot oxidation rate. When 5 g/L of ash is deposited, the complete oxidation of soot can be achieved 90 s faster with a 60 ^°C increase in wall temperature. The gain on soot oxidation rate increases with increasing amounts of deposited ash and reaches a plateau when the deposited ash approaches 15 g/L. Owing to the sintering and melting of ash when the temperature reaches 900 ^°C and the consequent uncontrolled regeneration, the soot carrying capacity should be identified based on the amount of deposited ash within DPF.     

Investigation of Two-Fluid Methods for Large Eddy Simulation of Spray Combustion in Gas Turbines

An extension of the large eddy simulation (LES) technique to two-phase reacting flows, required to capture and predict the behavior of industrial burners, is presented. While most efforts reported in the literature to construct LES solvers for two-phase flow focus on Euler–Lagrange formulation, the present work explores a different solution (‘two-fluid’ approach) where an Eulerian formulation is used for the liquid phase and coupled with the LES solver of the gas phase. The equations used for each phase and the coupling terms are presented before describing validation in two simple cases which gather some of the specificities of real combustion chamber: (1) a one-dimensional laminar JP10/air flame and (2) a non-reacting swirled flow where solid particles disperse (Sommerfeld and Qiu, Int. J. Multiphase Flow 19(6):1093–1127, 1993). After these validations, the LES tool is applied to a realistic aircraft combustion chamber to study both a steady flame regime and an ignition sequence by a spark. Results bring new insights into the physics of these complex flames and demonstrate the capabilities of two-fluid LES.     

Numerical Simulation with an Extinction Database for Use with the Eddy Dissipation Concept for Turbulent Combustion

A Local Extinction approach for treating chemical reaction kinetics within the Eddy Dissipation Concept (EDC) has been examined. It applies a database of pre-calculated chemical time scales, which contains the influence of chemical kinetics that is otherwise time-consuming to calculate. The approach was evaluated against experimental data for two piloted diffusion flames (Sandia/TNF Flame D and Flame E) and a piloted lean-premixed jet burner (PPJB). Results were also compared to the EDC with Fast Chemistry and with full Detailed Chemistry (GRI-Mech 3.0). All validation simulations were carried out using a standard k???ε turbulence model and the open-source CFD-toolbox OpenFOAM. The Local Extinction approach showed significantly better results than the Fast Chemistry approach while having a comparably small computational cost. For Flame D and the PPJB, the reactions along centerline and in the mixing layer near the nozzle, the reactions were reduced. For Flame E, the Local Extinciton model predicted some lift off of the flame. The Detailed Chemistry approach gave the best predictions compared to the experimental data, however the calculation effort was orders of magnitude higher.     

膛内等离子体点火及燃烧增强过程数值模拟

在初始点火过程中 ,假设等离子体为充分发展射流流动 ,因而可采用积分近似模型进行描述。而在随后的膛内燃烧过程中通过以经验公式给出等离子体混合长度的方法来处理等离子体的运动 ,并给出了合适的相间阻力及传热公式。通过在计算网格设计中引入了自适应方法提高了数值解精度。计算膛压曲线与实验符合良好。相对常规内弹道情形 ,等离子体能量的注入使在不同时刻膛内的气、固两相速度、压力和膛底温度等出现提高 ,这是等离子体注入后对内弹道的增强过程。计算结果为固体工质电热化学炮的弹道设计提供了理论依据。     

Experimental and Numerical Simulations of Spray Impingement and Combustion Characteristics in Gasoline Direct Injection Engines under Variable Driving Conditions

Gasoline direct injection (GDI) increases engine power output and reduces emissions. In GDI engines, increasing injection pressure improves atomization, which increases thermal efficiency at the cost of wall wetting. When wall wetting occurs, both soot emissions and fuel consumption increase. Wall wetting in GDI engines under cold driving conditions has rarely been considered. In this study, experimental data characterizing droplet splashing/spreading phenomena were collected to inform numerical simulations of combustion characteristics and wall wetting subject to variable driving conditions and excess air ratio, λ. Fully 3D and unsteady numerical simulations were carried out to predict flow-field, combustion, and spray-impingement characteristics. To simulate a GDI engine, a spray-impingement model was developed using both experimental data and previous modeling efforts. The excess air ratio and driving-condition temperature were the variable parameters considered in this study. When decreasing λ from 1.0 to 0.7 by increasing the fuel-injection rate (fuel rich), the cylinder pressure increases to 61 % of the pressure when λ=1.0. Because of increasing the fuel-injection rate, the increased momentum in the fuel spray increases both wall wetting and soot generation. At low driving-condition temperatures, the cylinder pressure was up to 63 % less than that under warm conditions, but with increased soot generation. Simulations revealed a correlation between wall wetting and the soot emissions. Soot generation was most sensitive to changes in wall wetting.     

基于有效参数法的固定床化学链燃烧数值模拟

本文基于有效参数法和变核颗粒模型,对固定床化学链燃烧进行数值模拟．计算并分析不同颗粒参数对二维固定床化学链燃烧结果的影响．在有效参数模型中,颗粒填充床被看作均匀的流体域．本文主要模拟了组分场和温度场,通过改变颗粒直径、孔隙率、内部粒子直径三组参数,取得了不同条件下二维固定床化学链燃烧床层所能达到的最高温度以及反应所用的时间．通过对不同参数模拟结果的分析,得出颗粒内部结构对反应特性的影响规律．     

Numerical Simulation of Non-premixed Turbulent Combustion Using the Eddy Dissipation Concept and Comparing with the Steady Laminar Flamelet Model

Numerical simulations of the Sandia flame CHNa and the Sydney bluff-body stabilized flame HM1E are reported and the results are compared to available experimental data. The numerical method is based on compressible URANS formulations which were implemented recently in the OpenFOAM toolbox. In this study, the calculations are carried out using the conventional compressible URANS approach and a standard k- ?? turbulence model. The Eddy Dissipation Concept with a detailed chemistry approach is used for the turbulence-chemistry interaction. The syngas (CO/H₂) chemistry diluted by 30 % nitrogen in the Sandia flame CHNa and CH₄/H₂ combustion in the Sydney flame HM1E are described by the full GRI-3.0 mechanism. A robust implicit Runge-Kutta method (RADAU5) is used for integrating stiff ordinary differential equations to calculate the reaction rates. The radiation is treated by the P1-approximation model. Both target flames are predicted with the Steady Laminar Flamelet model using the commercial code ANSYS FLUENT as well. In general, there is good agreement between present simulations and measurements for both flames, which indicates that the proposed numerical method is suitable for this type of combustion, provides acceptable accuracy and is ready for further combustion application development.     

Effects of Spray and Turbulence Modelling on the Mixing and Combustion Characteristics of an n-heptane Spray Flame Simulated with Dynamic Adaptive Chemistry

Accurate modelling of spray combustion process is essential for efficiency improvement and emissions reduction in practical combustion engines. In this work, both unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations and large eddy simulations (LES) are performed to investigate the effects of spray and turbulence modelling on the mixing and combustion characteristics of an n-heptane spray flame in a constant volume chamber at realistic conditions. The non-reacting spray process is first simulated with URANS to investigate the effects of entrainment gas-jet model on the penetration characteristics and fuel vapor distributions. It is found that the droplet motion near the nozzle has significant influence on the fuel vapor distribution, while the liquid penetration length is controlled by the evaporation process and insensitive to gas-jet model. For the case considered, both URANS with the gas-jet model and large eddy simulations can properly predict the vapor penetration. For the combustion characteristics, it is found that LES yields better predictions in the global combustion characteristics. The URANS with gas jet model yields a comparable flame length and lift-off-length (LOL) to LES, but results in a larger ignition delay time compared to the experimental data. Another focus of this work is to qualify the convergence characteristics of the dynamic adaptive chemistry (DAC) method in these transient combustion simulations, where DAC is applied to reduce the mechanism locally and on-the-fly to accelerate chemistry calculations. The instantaneous flame structures and global combustion characteristics such as ignition delay time, flame lift-off length and emissions are compared between simulations with and without DAC. For URANS, good agreements are observed both on instantaneous flame structures and global characteristics. For LES, it is shown that the errors incurred by DAC are small for scatter distributions in composition space and global combustion characteristics, while they may significantly affect instantaneous flame structures in physical space. The study reveals that for DAC application in transient simulations, global or statistic information should be used to assess the accuracy, such as manifolds in composition space, conditional quantities and global combustion characteristics. For the cases investigated, a speed-up factor of more than two is achieved by DAC with a 92-species skeletal mechanism with less than 0.2 % and 3.0 % discrepancy in ignition delay and LOL, respectively.     

Direct Numerical Simulation of Statistically Stationary One- and Two-Phase Turbulent Combustion: A Turbulent Injection Procedure

A new turbulent injection procedure dedicated to fully compressible direct numerical simulation (DNS) or large eddy simulation (LES) solvers is proposed. To avoid the appearance of spurious acoustic waves, this method is based on an accurate tracking of the turbulent structures crossing the boundary at the inlet of the domain. A finite difference DNS solver has been coupled with a spectral simulation in which a statistically stationary homogeneous turbulence evolves to provide fluctuating boundary conditions.A new turbulence forcing method, dedicated to spectral solvers, has been developed as well to control the major properties of the injected flow (turbulent kinetic energy, dissipation rate and integral length scale). One-dimensional Navier–Stokes characteristic boundary conditions extended to non-stationary flows are coupled with the injection procedure to evaluate is potential in four various configurations: spatially decaying turbulence, dispersion of vaporizing sprays, propagation of one- and two-phase V-shape turbulent flames.     

Analysis of Mixing Models for use in Simulations of Turbulent Spray Combustion

The present study concerns the investigation of different mixing models for use in the transported probability density function (PDF) modeling of turbulent (reacting) spray flows. The modeling of the turbulent mixing and other characteristic scalar variables such as gas enthalpy using transported (joint) PDFs has become an important method to describe turbulent (reacting) spray flows since the evaporation process causes the PDF of the mixture fraction to deviate from the widely used β function, which is typically used in models for turbulent gas flows. In the PDF transport equation, the molecular mixing does not appear in closed form so that modeling strategies are required. For gas combustion, the interaction-by-exchange-with-the-mean (IEM) model, the modified Curl (MC) model, and the Euclidean minimum spanning tree (EMST) models are used. More recently, a new mixing model, the PSP model, which is based on parameterized scalar profiles has been developed. The present study focuses on the use and analysis of the IEM, MC and PSP models for turbulent spray flames. For this purpose, the models are reconsidered with respect to the evaporation process that must be included and evaluated if spray combustion is considered. For model evaluation, turbulent ethanol/air spray flames are simulated, and the results are compared to experimental data by A. Masri, University of Sydney, Australia.     

微型开缝钝体燃烧器燃烧特性数值分析

本文将开缝钝体稳燃技术应用于微型燃烧器中,采用详细化学反应机理模拟了不同速度下微型开缝钝体燃烧器与微型常规钝体燃烧器的燃烧情况．结果表明：开缝钝体燃烧器火焰宽度一致性较好,火焰中心温度沿轴向分布更加均匀,尤其在速度较大时,开缝钝体燃烧器优势更加明显;开缝钝体燃烧器燃烧效率高于常规钝体燃烧器,速度大于25m/s时,开缝钝体燃烧器效率高出常规钝体燃烧器5%左右;由于开缝钝体中钝体缝隙过大,濒临吹熄极限时,钝体后值班火焰被吹熄,开缝钝体燃烧器吹熄极限略有降低．     

具有越流的多层气藏的数值模拟研究

由于沉积的原因 ,油气藏通常由多层组成 ,每层的流体和岩石具有不同的物理性质。本文对打开全部气层进行合采的试井过程以及打开部分层进行合采的试井过程 ,利用有限差分方法编制了模拟试井程序。两层情形的数值解与解析解进行了比较 ,说明了数值方法的正确性。通过对模拟计算结果的分析 ,阐明了井底压力曲线的特点和利用该曲线进行试井解释的方法 ,并说明了气藏层间越流的特点及性状。     

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.     

On the Validation of Large Eddy Simulation Applied to Internal Combustion Engine Flows Part II: Numerical Analysis

In internal combustion engines, the characteristic in-cylinder flow field is essential and significantly contributes to engine efficiency and performance. This paper describes the numerical investigation of the flow field in a motored 4-stroke, single-cylinder research engine. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons between experimental and numerical data have been performed at selected crank angle and results obtained in this work are discussed. Statistical flow properties are examined to analyze the averaged and instantaneous flow field. In order to investigate higher order statistical velocity moments and gain insight in the physical processes describing the engine flow structure, multi-cycle Large Eddy Simulation (LES) was carried out on two meshes with different spatial resolution. The three-dimensional structure of the flow has been also visualized by means of iso-surfaces of vortical structures, based on the Q criterion for individual cycles during intake. In order to assess the analysis and to verify that the computational mesh is applicable for the performance of LES simulations, the turbulence resolution M and the ratio of sgs-viscosity to the laminar viscosity were evaluated along the planes of interest. A direct comparison of the statistics of the flow field extracted from the numerical predictions shows a very good agreement with measurements conducted in the same configuration. Discrepancies have been however observed, in particular in the higher moments of the velocity components. Whilst this can be attributed mostly to the limited number of statistical sample (50 LES cycles) collected during the simulation, further investigation is certainly necessary to assess the relevance of modeling and spatial resolution issues.     

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.     

Effects of Turbulence on Self-sustained Combustion in Premixed Flame Kernels: A Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) Study

The effects of mean flame radius and turbulence on self-sustained combustion of turbulent premixed spherical flames in decaying turbulence have been investigated using three-dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) with single step Arrhenius chemistry. Several flame kernels with different initial radius or initial turbulent field have been studied for identical conditions of thermo-chemistry. It has been found that for very small kernel radius the mean displacement speed may become negative leading ultimately to extinction of the flame kernel. A mean negative displacement speed is shown to signify a physical situation where heat transfer from the kernel overcomes the heat release due to combustion. This mechanism is further enhanced by turbulent transport and, based on simulations with different initial turbulent velocity fields, it has been found that self-sustained combustion is adversely affected by higher turbulent velocity fluctuation magnitude and integral length scale. A scaling analysis is performed to estimate the critical radius for self-sustained combustion in premixed flame kernels in a turbulent environment. The scaling analysis is found to be in good agreement with the results of the simulations.