scholarly journals Direct Numerical Simulations of the Impact of High Turbulence Intensities and Volume Viscosity on Premixed Methane Flames

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Fru ◽  
Gábor Janiga ◽  
Dominique Thévenin

Parametric direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent premixed flames burning methane in the thin reaction zone regime have been performed relying on complex physicochemical models and taking into account volume viscosity (κ). The combined effect of increasing turbulence intensities (u′) andκon the resulting flame structure is investigated. The turbulent flame structure is marred with numerous perforations and edge flame structures appearing within the burnt gas mixture at various locations, shapes and sizes. Stepping upu′from 3 to 12 m/s leads to an increase in the scaled integrated heat release rate from 2 to 16. This illustrates the interest of combustion in a highly turbulent medium in order to obtain high volumetric heat release rates in compact burners. Flame thickening is observed to be predominant at high turbulent Reynolds number. Via ensemble averaging, it is shown that both laminar and turbulent flame structures are not modified byκ. These findings are in opposition to previous observations for flames burning hydrogen, where significant modifications induced byκwere found for both the local and global properties of turbulent flames. Therefore, to save computational resources, we suggest that the volume viscosity transport term be ignored for turbulent combustion DNS at low Mach numbers when burning hydrocarbon fuels.

1994 ◽  
Vol 281 ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Baum ◽  
T. J. Poinsot ◽  
D. C. Haworth ◽  
N. Darabiha

Premixed H2/O2/N2 flames propagating in two-dimensional turbulence have been studied using direct numerical simulations (DNS: simulations in which all fluid and thermochemical scales are fully resolved). Simulations include realistic chemical kinetics and molecular transport over a range of equivalence ratios Φ (Φ = 0.35, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.3). The validity of the flamelet assumption for premixed turbulent flames is checked by comparing DNS data and results obtained for steady strained premixed flames with the same chemistry (flamelet ‘library’). This comparison shows that flamelet libraries overestimate the influence of stretch on flame structure. Results are also compared with earlier zero-chemistry (flame sheet) and one-step chemistry simulations. Consistent with the simpler models, the turbulent flame with realistic chemistry aligns preferentially with extensive strain rates in the tangent plane and flame curvature probability density functions are close to symmetric with near-zero means. For very lean flames it is also found that the local flame structure correlates with curvature as predicted by DNS based on simple chemistry. However, for richer flames, by contrast to simple-chemistry results with non-unity Lewis numbers (ratio of thermal to species diffusivity), local flame structure does not correlate with curvature but rather with tangential strain rate. Turbulent straining results in substantial thinning of the flame relative to the steady unstrained laminar case. Heat-release and H2O2 contours remain thin and connected (‘flamelet-like’) while species including H-atom and OH are more diffuse. Peak OH concentration occurs well behind the peak heat-release zone when the flame temperature is high (of the order of 2800 K). For cooler and leaner flames (about 1600 K and for an equivalence ratio below 0.5) the OH radical is concentrated near the reaction zone and the maximum OH level provides an estimate of the local flamelet speed as assumed by Becker et al. (1990).


Author(s):  
B. Franzelli ◽  
E. Riber ◽  
B. Cuenot ◽  
M. Ihme

Numerical simulations are regarded as an essential tool for improving the design of combustion systems since they can provide information that is complementary to experiments. However, although numerical simulations have already been successfully applied to the prediction of temperature and species concentration in turbulent flames, the production of soot is far from being conclusive due to the complexity of the processes involved in soot production. In this context, first Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of soot production in turbulent flames are reported in the literature in laboratory-scale configurations, thereby confirming the feasibility of the approach. However numerous modeling and numerical issues have not been completely solved. Moreover, validation of the models through comparisons with measurements in realistic complex flows typical of aero-engines is still rare. This work therefore proposes to evaluate the LES approach for the prediction of soot production in an experimental swirl-stabilized non-premixed ethylene/air aero-engine combustor, for which soot and flame data are available. Two simulations are carried out using a two-equation soot model to compare the performance of a hybrid chemical description (reduced chemistry for the flame structure/tabulated chemistry for soot precursor chemistry) to a classical full tabulation method. Discrepancies of soot concentration between the two LES calculations will be analyzed and the sensitivity to the chemical models will be investigated.


Author(s):  
Sage L. Kokjohn ◽  
Rolf D. Reitz

In this work, a multimode combustion model that combines a comprehensive kinetics scheme for volumetric heat release and a level-set-based model for turbulent flame propagation is applied over the range of engine combustion regimes from non-premixed to premixed conditions. The model predictions of the ignition processes and flame structures are compared with the measurements from the literature of naturally occurring luminous emission and OH planar laser induced fluorescence. Comparisons are performed over a range of conditions from a conventional diesel operation (i.e., short ignition delay, high oxygen concentration) to a low temperature combustion mode (i.e., long ignition delay, low oxygen concentration). The multimode combustion model shows an excellent prediction of the bulk thermodynamic properties (e.g., rate of heat release), as well as local phenomena (i.e., ignition location, fuel and combustion intermediate species distributions, and flame structure). The results of this study show that, even in the limit of mixing controlled combustion, the flame structure is captured extremely well without considering subgrid scale turbulence-chemistry interactions. The combustion process is dominated by volumetric heat release in a thin zone around the periphery of the jet. The rate of combustion is controlled by the transport of a reactive mixture to the reaction zone, and the dominant mixing processes are well described by the large scale mixing and diffusion. As the ignition delay is increased past the end of injection (i.e., positive ignition dwell), both the simulations and optical engine experiments show that the reaction zone spans the entire jet cross section. In this combustion mode, the combustion rate is no longer limited by the transport to the reaction zone, but rather by the kinetic time scales. Although comparisons of results with and without consideration of flame propagation show very similar flame structures and combustion characteristics, the addition of the flame propagation model reveals details of the edge or triple-flame structure in the region surrounding the diffusion flame at the lift-off location. These details are not captured by the purely kinetics based combustion model, but are well represented by the present multimode model.


2009 ◽  
pp. 239-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Fru ◽  
H. Shalaby ◽  
A. Laverdant ◽  
C. Zistl ◽  
G. Janiga ◽  
...  

AIAA Journal ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 962-970 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. A. McMurtry ◽  
W.-H. Jou ◽  
J. Riley ◽  
R. W. Metcalfe

Author(s):  
M. P. Auer ◽  
C. Hirsch ◽  
T. Sattelmayer

This paper discusses the structural changes observed in oscillating premixed turbulent swirling flames and demonstrates the influence of modulated mass flows on the flame dynamics in a preheated atmospheric test rig with a natural gas fired swirl burner. The experimentally investigated self excited and forced combustion oscillations of swirl stabilized premixed flames show varying time delays between the acoustically driven mass flow oscillations and the integral heat release rate of the flame. High speed films of the OH*-chemiluminescence reveal how the flame structure changes with the oscillation frequency and the phase angle between the fuel mass flow oscillation and the total mass flow at the burner exit. These parameters are found determine the spatial and temporal heat release distribution and thus the net heat release fluctuation. Therefore, the spatial and temporal heat release distribution along the flame length has an influence on the thermoacoustic coupling, even in the case of acoustically compact flames. The observed phenomena are discussed further using an 1-d analytical model. It underscores that for swirl stabilized premixed turbulent flames the dynamics of the flow field perturbation play a major role in creating the effective heat release fluctuation.


Author(s):  
Peter Brearley ◽  
Umair Ahmed ◽  
Nilanjan Chakraborty

AbstractScalar forcing in the context of turbulent stratified flame simulations aims to maintain the fuel-air inhomogeneity in the unburned gas. With scalar forcing, stratified flame simulations have the potential to reach a statistically stationary state with a prescribed mixture fraction distribution and root-mean-square value in the unburned gas, irrespective of the turbulence intensity. The applicability of scalar forcing for Direct Numerical Simulations of stratified mixture combustion is assessed by considering a recently developed scalar forcing scheme, known as the reaction analogy method, applied to both passive scalar mixing and the imperfectly mixed unburned reactants of statistically planar stratified flames under low Mach number conditions. The newly developed method enables statistically symmetric scalar distributions between bell-shaped and bimodal to be maintained without any significant departure from the specified bounds of the scalar. Moreover, the performance of the newly proposed scalar forcing methodology has been assessed for a range of different velocity forcing schemes (Lundgren forcing and modified bandwidth forcing) and also without any velocity forcing. It has been found that the scalar forcing scheme has no adverse impact on flame-turbulence interaction and it only maintains the prescribed root-mean-square value of the scalar fluctuation, and its distribution. The scalar integral length scale evolution is shown to be unaffected by the scalar forcing scheme studied in this paper. Thus, the scalar forcing scheme has a high potential to provide a valuable computational tool to enable analysis of the effects of unburned mixture stratification on turbulent flame dynamics.


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