A LES-CMC formulation for premixed flames including differential diffusion

A finite volume large eddy simulation–conditional moment closure (LES-CMC) numerical framework for premixed combustion developed in a previous studyhas been extended to account for differential diffusion. The non-unity Lewis number CMC transport equation has an additional convective term in sample space proportional to the conditional diffusion of the progress variable, that in turn accounts for diffusion normal to the flame front and curvature-induced effects. Planar laminar simulations are first performed using a spatially homogeneous non-unity Lewis number CMC formulation and validated against physical-space fully resolved reference solutions. The same CMC formulation is subsequently used to numerically investigate the effects of curvature for laminar flames having different effective Lewis numbers: a lean methane–air flame with Le_eff = 0.99 and a lean hydrogen–air flame with Le_eff = 0.33. Results suggest that curvature does not affect the conditional heat release if the effective Lewis number tends to unity, so that curvature-induced transport may be neglected. Finally, the effect of turbulence on the flame structure is qualitatively analysed using LES-CMC simulations with and without differential diffusion for a turbulent premixed bluff body methane–air flame exhibiting local extinction behaviour. Overall, both the unity and the non-unity computations predict the characteristic M-shaped flame observed experimentally, although some minor differences are identified. The findings suggest that for the high Karlovitz number (from 1 to 10) flame considered, turbulent mixing within the flame weakens the differential transport contribution by reducing the conditional scalar dissipation rate and accordingly the conditional diffusion of the progress variable.     

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.     

A Novel One- and Zero-Dimensional Model for Turbulent Jet Ignition

Flow, Turbulence and Combustion - Turbulent jet ignition (TJI) is a promising combustion technology for burning highly diluted air-fuel mixtures. Computationally efficient models to assess the...     

Three-dimensional numerical simulations of cellular jet diffusion flames

Recent experimental investigations have demonstrated that the appearance of particular cellular states in circular non-premixed jet flames significantly depends on a number of parameters, including the initial mixture strength, reactant Lewis numbers, and proximity to the extinction limit (Damköhler number). For CO₂-diluted H₂/O₂ jet diffusion flames, these studies have shown that a variety of different cellular patterns or states can form. For given fuel and oxidizer compositions, several preferred states were found to co-exist, and the particular state realized was determined by the initial conditions. To elucidate the dynamics of cellular instabilities, circular non-premixed jet flames are modeled with a combination of three-dimensional numerical simulation and linear stability analysis (LSA). In both formulations, chemistry is described by a single-step, finite-rate reaction, and different reactant Lewis numbers and molecular weights are specified. The three-dimensional numerical simulations show that different cellular flames can be obtained close to extinction and that different states co-exist for the same parameter values. Similar to the experiments, the behavior of the cell structures is sensitive to (numerical) noise. During the transient blow-off process, the flame undergoes transitions to structures with different number of cells, while the flame edge close to the nozzle oscillates in the streamwise direction. For conditions similar to the experiments discussed, the LSA results reveal various cellular instabilities, typically with azimuthal wavenumber m = 1–6. Consistent with previous theoretical work, the propensity for the cellular instabilities is shown to increase with decreasing reactant Lewis number and Damköhler number.     

An experimental and numerical investigation of the hetero-/homogeneous combustion of fuel-rich hydrogen/air mixtures over platinum

The hetero-/homogeneous combustion of hydrogen/air mixtures over platinum was investigated experimentally and numerically in a channel-flow configuration at fuel-rich equivalence ratios ranging from 2 to 7, pressures up to 5 bar and wall temperatures 760–1200 K. Experiments involved in situ one-dimensional Raman measurements of major gas-phase species concentrations over the catalyst boundary layer and planar laser induced fluorescence (LIF) of the OH radical, while simulations included an elliptic 2-D model with detailed heterogeneous and homogeneous reaction mechanisms. The employed reaction schemes reproduced the measured catalytic reactant consumption, the onset of homogeneous ignition, and the post-ignition flame shapes at all examined conditions. Although below a critical pressure, which depended on temperature, the intrinsic gas-phase kinetics of hydrogen dictated lower reactivity for the fuel-rich stoichiometries when compared to fuel-lean ones, homogeneous ignition was still more favorable for the rich stoichiometries due to the lower molecular transport of the deficient oxygen reactant that resulted in modest catalytic reactant consumption over the gaseous induction zone. Above the critical pressure, the intrinsic gaseous hydrogen kinetics yielded higher reactivity for the rich stoichiometries, which resulted in vigorous gaseous combustion at pressures up to 5 bar, in contrast to lean stoichiometry studies whereby homogeneous combustion was altogether suppressed above 3 bar. Computations at fuel-rich stoichiometries in practical channel geometries indicated that homogeneous combustion was not of concern for reactor thermal management, since the larger than unity Lewis number of the deficient oxygen reactant confined the flames to the core of the channel, away from the solid walls.     

OH Concentration Measurements by Resonant Holographic Interferometry and Comparison with Direct Numerical Simulations

We apply a novel laser diagnostic technique — Resonant Holographic Interferometry (RHI) to measure the concentration of hydroxyl radical (∼2000 ppm) in a co-flow diffusion flame of diluted hydrogen and air stabilized on a Wolfhard-Parkerburner. This methodology is based upon the dispersion of light of frequency close to an electronic transition of a target molecule. The two-color setup utilized in RHI provides a two-dimensional distribution of the target species concentration and quantitative information can be obtained from the interferogram without requiring any calibration. To provide independent flame data for comparison, a two-dimensional numerical simulation was performed taking into account the effects of detailed chemical kinetics and transport phenomena. In spite of a number of simplifying assumptions made in the simulation, computational and experimental results are in good agreement with respect to the magnitude and width of the region where OH is found. We do observe a difference of approximately 1 mm in the flame position due to the simplifying assumptions made in the simulation. The comparison between the experimental and numerical results clearly demonstrated the potential of RHI in flame diagnostics. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of the hetero-/homogeneous combustion of lean propane/air mixtures over platinum

The pure heterogeneous and the coupled hetero-/homogeneous combustion of fuel-lean propane/air mixtures over platinum have been investigated at pressures 1 bar  p  7 bar, fuel-to-air equivalence ratios 0.23  φ  0.43, and catalytic wall temperatures 723 K  T_w  1286 K. Experiments were performed in an optically accessible catalytic channel-flow reactor and involved 1-D Raman measurements of major gas-phase species concentrations across the reactor boundary layer for the assessment of catalytic fuel conversion and planar laser induced fluorescence (LIF) of the OH radical for the determination of homogeneous ignition. Numerical predictions were carried out with a 2-D elliptic CFD code that included a one-step catalytic reaction for the total oxidation of propane on Pt, an elementary C₃ gas-phase chemical reaction mechanism, and detailed transport. A global catalytic reaction step valid over the entire pressure–temperature-equivalence ratio parameter range has been established, which revealed a p^0.75 dependence of the catalytic reactivity on pressure. The aforementioned global catalytic step was further coupled to a detailed gas-phase reaction mechanism in order to simulate homogeneous ignition characteristics in the channel-flow reactor. The predictions reproduced within 10% the measured homogeneous ignition distances at pressures p  5 bar, while at p = 7 bar the simulations overpredicted the measurements by 19%. The overall model performance suggests that the employed hetero-/homogeneous chemical reaction schemes are suitable for the design of propane-fueled catalytic microreactors.     

Development of an algebraic wall heat transfer model for LES in IC engines using DNS data

This paper presents a novel algebraic wall-modeled large-eddy simulation (WMLES) approach for wall heat transfer (WHT) in internal combustion engines (ICE) using recent high-fidelity simulation data from two real ICE and a flame-wall interaction (FWI) setup. The model formulation is based on intuitive arguments rather than simplified forms of near-wall governing equations. Input information from the two wall-normal wall-adjacent nodes is used, facilitating the interpretation of the local state of the thermal boundary layer (TBL). With filtered direct numerical simulation (DNS) data (i.e. a ‘perfect’ LES), model performance is evaluated locally at different near-wall resolutions. The proposed model is compared to a widely used wall function (WF) approach and to a data-driven model.     

Global reaction mechanism for the auto-ignition of full boiling range gasoline and kerosene fuels

Compact reaction schemes capable of predicting auto-ignition are a prerequisite for the development of strategies to control and optimise homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engines. In particular for full boiling range fuels exhibiting two stage ignition a tremendous demand exists in the engine development community. The present paper therefore meticulously assesses a previous 7-step reaction scheme developed to predict auto-ignition for four hydrocarbon blends and proposes an important extension of the model constant optimisation procedure, allowing for the model to capture not only ignition delays, but also the evolutions of representative intermediates and heat release rates for a variety of full boiling range fuels. Additionally, an extensive validation of the later evolutions by means of various detailed n-heptane reaction mechanisms from literature has been presented; both for perfectly homogeneous, as well as non-premixed/stratified HCCI conditions. Finally, the models potential to simulate the auto-ignition of various full boiling range fuels is demonstrated by means of experimental shock tube data for six strongly differing fuels, containing e.g. up to 46.7% cyclo-alkanes, 20% napthalenes or complex branched aromatics such as methyl- or ethyl-napthalene. The good predictive capability observed for each of the validation cases as well as the successful parameterisation for each of the six fuels, indicate that the model could, in principle, be applied to any hydrocarbon fuel, providing suitable adjustments to the model parameters are carried out. Combined with the optimisation strategy presented, the model therefore constitutes a major step towards the inclusion of real fuel kinetics into full scale HCCI engine simulations.