Application and theoretical analysis of the flamelet model for supersonic turbulent combustion flows in the scramjet engine

In the framework of Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation, supersonic turbulent combustion flows at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) combustor and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) integrated scramjet engine are numerically simulated using the flamelet model. Based on the DLR combustor case, theoretical analysis and numerical experiments conclude that: the finite rate model only implicitly considers the large-scale turbulent effect and, due to the lack of the small-scale non-equilibrium effect, it would overshoot the peak temperature compared to the flamelet model in general. Furthermore, high-Mach-number compressibility affects the flamelet model mainly through two ways: the spatial pressure variation and the static enthalpy variation due to the kinetic energy. In the flamelet library, the mass fractions of the intermediate species, e.g. OH, are more sensible to the above two effects than the main species such as H₂O. Additionally, in the combustion flowfield where the pressure is larger than the value adopted in the generation of the flamelet library or the conversion from the static enthalpy to the kinetic energy occurs, the temperature obtained by the flamelet model without taking compressibility effects into account would be undershot, and vice versa. The static enthalpy variation effect has only little influence on the temperature simulation of the flamelet model, while the effect of the spatial pressure variation may cause relatively large errors. From the JAXA case, it is found that the flamelet model cannot in general be used for an integrated scramjet engine. The existence of the inlet together with the transverse injection scheme could cause large spatial variations of pressure, so the pressure value adopted for the generation of a flamelet library should be fine-tuned according to a pre-simulation of pure mixing.