Investigation of lengthscales, scalar dissipation, and flame orientation in a piloted diffusion flame by LES

This work investigates the structure of a diffusion flame in terms of lengthscales, scalar dissipation, and flame orientation by using large eddy simulation. This has been performed for a turbulent, non-premixed, piloted methane/air jet flame (Flame D) at a Reynolds-number of 22,400. A steady flamelet model, which was represented by artificial neural networks, yields species mass fractions, density, and viscosity as a function of the mixture fraction. This will be shown to suffice to simulate such flames. To allow to examine scalar dissipation, a grid of 1.97 × 10⁶ nodes was applied that resolves more than 75% of the turbulent kinetic energy. The accuracy of the results is assessed by varying the grid-resolution and by comparison to experimental data by Barlow, Frank, Karpetis, Schneider (Sandia, Darmstadt), and others. The numerical procedure solves the filtered, incompressible transport equations for mass, momentum, and mixture fraction. For subgrid closure, an eddy viscosity/diffusivity approach is applied, relying on the dynamic Germano model. Artificial turbulent inflow velocities were generated to feature proper one- and two-point statistics. The results obtained for both the one- and two-point statistics were found in good agreement to the experimental data. The PDF of the flame orientation shows the tilting of the flame fronts towards the centerline. Finally, the steady flamelet approach was found to be sufficient for this type of flame unless slowly reacting species are of interest.     

An efficient PDF calculation of flame temperature and major species in turbulent non-premixed flames

In spite of recent developments in the PDF calculations of turbulent flames, the high computational time required to implement PDF simulations makes it intractable in practical applications. Therefore, it is important to design and select different parameters for PDF calculation of most important quantities, i.e. temperature and major species means, in an efficient manner. The ingredients of the present model are a standard k$k$–ε$\epsilon$ turbulence closure for modeling flow field and a joint composition PDF closure for the scalar fields. A modified Curl model is applied to consider molecular mixing in PDF transport equation and a simplified two-step mechanism which lowers the computational cost is incorporated to describe the chemistry. The flow field is solved numerically using an upwind discretization for the convective terms and a central discretization for the diffusion terms by coupling it with an Eulerian Monte Carlo algorithm to solve PDF transport equation. To show the superiority of the current PDF calculations over traditional moment-closure methods commonly used in practical applications, simulation is also performed by RANS method which shows large discrepancies, especially in prediction of maximum flame temperature (on the basis of present results, predicted flame temperature has 26%$26\%$ error via RANS method and 8%$8\%$ error via PDF method). Stoichiometric flame length predicted by RANS has 10%$10\%$ error while, by PDF method, this error is negligible and about 0.6%$0.6\%$. The effect of coefficient _CΦ$C_{\Phi }$ on the modified Curl model is also investigated and it is concluded that the commonly used value _CΦ=2.0$C_{\Phi }=2.0$ is the best choice for the case of study. The numerical results obtained reveal that Westbrook–Drier mechanism is working very well in fuel-lean (F<_Fst$F<F_{\mathit{st}}$) non-premixed combustion and also it predicts the total heat released in methane combustion in a very good agreement with the experiment.     

Multiple speeds of flame edge propagation for Lewis numbers above one

Edges of diffusion flames in a counterflow burner are examined numerically for Lewis greater than unity. When the speed of propagation is plotted against Damköhler for a range of Lewis a fold bifurcation is observed. It is shown that there exist stable positively and negatively propagating edges for some Damköhler and Lewis number pairs. It is further shown that changed local conditions can lead to a transition from positive (advancing into the unburnt gasses) to negative (receding) propagation.     

Analysis of kinetic mechanism performance in conditional moment closure modelling of turbulent,non-premixed methane flames

This paper presents results obtained from the application of a first-order conditional moment closure approach to the modelling of two methane flames of differing geometries. Predictions are based upon a second-moment turbulence and scalar-flux closure, and supplemented with full and reduced chemical kinetic mechanisms, ranging from a simple 12-step to a complex 1207-step mechanism. Alongside analysis of the full kinetic schemes' performance, is an appraisal of the behaviour of their derivatives obtained using mechanism-reduction techniques. The study was undertaken to analyse the practicality of incorporating kinetic models of varying complexity into calculations of turbulent non-premixed flames, and to make comparison of their performance. Despite extensive studies of the predictive ability of such schemes under laminar flame conditions, systematic evaluations have not been performed for turbulent reacting flows. This paper reflects upon the impact that selection of chemical kinetics has upon subsequent calculations and concludes that, although application of reduced schemes is more than adequate to reproduce experimental data, selection of the parent mechanism is of paramount importance to the prediction of minor species. Although widely used schemes are well documented and validated, their performances vary considerably. Thus, careful consideration must be made to their application and origins during the evaluation of combustion models.     

Laminar flamelet modeling of a turbulent CH4/H2/N2 jet diffusion flame using artificial neural networks

The laminar flamelet concept is used in the prediction of mean reactive scalars in a non-premixed turbulent CH₄/H₂/N₂ flame. First, a databank for temperature and species concentrations is developed from the solutions of counter-flow diffusion flames. The effects of flow field on flamelets are considered by using mixture fraction and scalar dissipation rate. Turbulence-chemistry interactions are taken into account by integrating different quantities based on a presumed probability density function (PDF), to calculate the Favre-averaged values of scalars. Flamelet library is then generated. To interpolate in the generated library, one artificial neural network (ANN) is trained where the mean and variance of mixture fraction and the scalar dissipation rate are used as inputs, and species mean mass fractions and temperature are selected as outputs. The weights and biases of this ANN are implemented in a CFD flow solver code, to estimate mean values of the scalars. Results reveal that ANN yields good predictions and the computational time has decreased as compared to numerical integration for the estimation of mean thermo-chemical variables in the CFD code. Predicted thermo-chemical quantities are close to those from experimental measurements but some discrepancies exist, which are mainly due to the assumption of non-unity Lewis number in the calculations.     

Development of an Analytical <Emphasis Type="Italic">β</Emphasis>-Function PDF Integration Algorithm for Simulation of Non-premixed Turbulent Combustion

Among many presumed-shape pdf approaches for modeling non-premixed turbulent combustion, the presumed β-function pdf is widely used in the literature. However, numerical integration of the β-function pdf may encounter singularity difficulties at mixture fraction values of Z = 0 or 1. To date, this issue has been addressed by few publications. The present study proposes the Piecewise Integration Method (PIM), an efficient, robust and accurate algorithm to overcome these numerical difficulties with the added benefit of improving computational efficiency. Comparison of this method to the existing numerical integration methods shows that the PIM exhibits better accuracy and greatly increases computational efficiency. The PIM treatment of the β-function pdf integration is first applied to the Burke–Schumann solution in conjunction with the k − ε turbulence model to simulate a CH₄/H₂ bluff-body turbulent flame. The proposed new method is then applied to the same flow using a more complex combustion model, the laminar flamelet model. Numerical predictions obtained by using the proposed β-function pdf integration method are compared to experimental values of the velocity field, temperature and species mass fractions to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the present method.     

Numerical study of the ignition behavior of a post-discharge kernel in a turbulent stratified crossflow

Ensuring robust ignition is critical for the operability of aeronautical gas-turbine combustors. For ignition to be successful, an important aspect is the ability of the hot gas generated by the spark discharge to initiate combustion reactions, leading to the formation of a self-sustained ignition kernel. This study focuses on this phenomena by performing simulations of kernel ignition in a crossflow configuration that was characterized experimentally. First, inert simulations are performed to identify numerical parameters correctly reproducing the kernel ejection from the ignition cavity, which is here modeled as a pulsed jet. In particular, the kernel diameter and the transit time of the kernel to the reacting mixture are matched with measurements. Considering stochastic perturbations of the ejection velocity of the ignition kernel, the variability of the kernel transit time is also reproduced by the simulations. Subsequently, simulations of a series of ignition sequences are performed with varying equivalence ratio of the fuel-air mixture in the crossflow. The numerical results are shown to reproduce the ignition failure that occurs for the leanest equivalence ratio ($?=0.6$). For higher equivalence ratios, the simulations are shown to capture the sensitivity of the ignition to the equivalence ratio, and the kernel successfully transitions into a propagating flame. Significant stochastic dispersion of the ignition strength is observed, which relates to the variability of the transit time of the kernel to the reactive mixture. An analysis of the structure of the ignition kernel also highlights the transition towards a self-propagating flame for successful ignition conditions.     

A Stable Pressure-Correction Scheme for Time-Accurate Non-Premixed Combustion Simulations

An efficient time accurate algorithm is presented for numerical simulations of low-Mach number variable density flows in the context of non-premixed flames. The algorithm is based on a segregated solution formalism in the class of pressure-correction methods. It shows good conservation properties and returns stable results, regardless of the difference in density between neighboring cells. In the illustrative example, a flamesheet model is used to describe the combustion of fuel and oxidizer. The stability of the method is discussed for a 1D channel flow, containing both fuel and oxidizer. Results for a 2D testcase of a reacting mixing layer are also shown. Bart Merci is a postdoctoral fellow of the Fund of Scientific Research - Flanders (Belgium) (FWO-Vlaanderen).     

LES-CMC simulations of a turbulent bluff-body flame

The large Eddy simulations (LES)-conditional moment closure (CMC) method with detailed chemistry is applied to a bluff-body stabilized flame. Computations of the velocity and mixture fraction fields show good agreement with the experiments. Temperature and major species are well-predicted throughout the flame with the exception of the flow regions in the outer shear layer close to the nozzle where the pure mixing between hot recirculating products and fresh oxidizer cannot be captured. LES-CMC generally improves on results obtained with RANS-CMC and on LES that uses one representative flamelet to model the dependence of reactive species on mixture fraction. Simulated CO mass fractions are generally in good agreement with the experimental data although a 10% overprediction can be found at downstream positions. NO predictions show a distinct improvement over the flamelet approach, however, simulations overpredict NO mass fractions at all downstream locations due to an overprediction of temperature close to the nozzle. The potential of LES-CMC to predict unsteady finite rate effects is demonstrated by the prediction of endothermic—or “flame cooling”—regions close to the neck of the recirculation zone that favours ethylene production via the methane fuel decomposition channel.     

Prediction of local extinction and re-ignition effects in non-premixed turbulent combustion using a flamelet/progress variable approach

The flamelet/progress variable approach (FPVA) has been proposed by Pierce and Moin as a model for turbulent non-premixed combustion in large-eddy simulation. The filtered chemical source term in this model appears in unclosed form, and is modeled by a presumed probability density function (PDF) for the joint PDF of the mixture fraction Z and a flamelet parameter λ. While the marginal PDF of Z can be reasonably approximated by a beta distribution, a model for the conditional PDF of the flamelet parameter needs to be developed. Further, the ability of FPVA to predict extinction and re-ignition has also not been assessed. In this paper, we address these aspects of the model using the DNS database of Sripakagorn et al. It is first shown that the steady flamelet assumption in the context of FPVA leads to good predictions even for high levels of local extinction. Three different models for the conditional PDF of the flamelet parameter are tested in an a priori sense. Results obtained using a delta function to model the conditional PDF of λ lead to an overprediction of the mean temperature, even with only moderate extinction levels. It is shown that if the conditional PDF of λ is modeled by a beta distribution conditioned on Z, then FPVA can predict extinction and re-ignition effects, and good agreement between the model and DNS data for the mean temperature is observed.