scholarly journals Comparison of Flame Propagation Statistics Based on Direct Numerical Simulation of Simple and Detailed Chemistry. Part 2: Influence of Choice of Reaction Progress Variable

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5695
Author(s):  
Felix B. Keil ◽  
Marvin Amzehnhoff ◽  
Umair Ahmed ◽  
Nilanjan Chakraborty ◽  
Markus Klein

Flame propagation statistics for turbulent, statistically planar premixed flames obtained from 3D Direct Numerical Simulations using both simple and detailed chemistry have been evaluated and compared to each other. To achieve this, a new database has been established encompassing five different conditions on the turbulent combustion regime diagram, using nearly identical numerical methods and the same initial and boundary conditions. The discussion includes interdependencies of displacement speed and its individual components as well as surface density function (i.e., magnitude of the reaction progress variable) with tangential strain rate and curvature. For the analysis of detailed chemistry Direct Numerical Simulation data, three different definitions of reaction progress variable, based on CH4,H2O and O2 mass fractions will be used. While the displacement speed statistics remain qualitatively and to a large extent quantitatively similar for simple chemistry and detailed chemistry, there are pronounced differences for its individual contributions which to a large extent depend on the definition of reaction progress variable as well as on the chosen isosurface level. It is concluded that, while detailed chemistry simulations provide more detailed information about the flame structure, the choice of the reaction progress variable definition and the choice of the resulting isosurface give rise to considerable uncertainty in the interpretation of displacement speed statistics, sometimes even showing opposing trends. Simple chemistry simulations are shown to provide (a) the global flame propagation statistics which are qualitatively similar to the corresponding results from detailed chemistry simulations, (b) remove the uncertainties with respect to the choice of reaction progress variable, and (c) are more straightforward to compare with theoretical analysis or model assumptions that are mostly based on simple chemistry assumptions.

Author(s):  
Nilanjan Chakraborty ◽  
Alexander Herbert ◽  
Umair Ahmed ◽  
Hong G. Im ◽  
Markus Klein

AbstractA three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) database of statistically planar $$H_{2} -$$ H 2 - air turbulent premixed flames with an equivalence ratio of 0.7 spanning a large range of Karlovitz number has been utilised to assess the performances of the extrapolation relations, which approximate the stretch rate and curvature dependences of density-weighted displacement speed $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ . It has been found that the correlation between $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ and curvature remains negative and a significantly non-linear interrelation between $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ and stretch rate has been observed for all cases considered here. Thus, an extrapolation relation, which assumes a linear stretch rate dependence of density-weighted displacement speed has been found to be inadequate. However, an alternative extrapolation relation, which assumes a linear curvature dependence of $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ but allows for a non-linear stretch rate dependence of $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ , has been found to be more successful in capturing local behaviour of the density-weighted displacement speed. The extrapolation relations, which express $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ as non-linear functions of either curvature or stretch rate, have been found to capture qualitatively the non-linear curvature and stretch rate dependences of $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ more satisfactorily than the linear extrapolation relations. However, the improvement comes at the cost of additional tuning parameter. The Markstein lengths LM for all the extrapolation relations show dependence on the choice of reaction progress variable definition and for some extrapolation relations LM also varies with the value of reaction progress variable. The predictions of an extrapolation relation which involve solving a non-linear equation in terms of stretch rate have been found to be sensitive to the initial guess value, whereas a high order polynomial-based extrapolation relation may lead to overshoots and undershoots. Thus, a recently proposed extrapolation relation based on the analysis of simple chemistry DNS data, which explicitly accounts for the non-linear curvature dependence of the combined reaction and normal diffusion components of $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ , has been shown to exhibit promising predictions of $$S_{d}^{*}$$ S d ∗ for all cases considered here.


Author(s):  
Henrik Hesse ◽  
Sean P. Malkeson ◽  
Nilanjan Chakraborty

The statistics of the density-weighted displacement speed of the reaction progress variable c isosurfaces for stratified mixture combustion arising from localized ignition in a turbulent planar coflowing jet have been studied based on 3D Direct Numerical Simulation data where the jet is considered to be fuel-rich and the coflow is taken to be fuel-lean. The resulting flame following successful ignition shows the premixed mode of combustion in fuel-rich and fuel-lean zones although an additional diffusion flame branch was also observed on the stoichiometric mixture isosurface at early times of flame evolution. The flame propagation characteristics have been analyzed in terms of the reaction, normal diffusion and tangential diffusion components of the density-weighted displacement speed for different values of reaction progress variables across the flame brush. It has been found that the reaction, normal diffusion and tangential diffusion components of density-weighted displacement speed, remain the major contributors to the density-weighted displacement speed at all stages of flame evolution as the magnitude of the component which originates due to mixture inhomogeneity remains negligible in comparison to the magnitudes of other components in accordance with previous experimental studies. It has been demonstrated that curvature and tangential strain rate dependences of the reaction progress variable gradient play key roles in determining strain rate dependences of the reaction and normal diffusion components of the density-weighted displacement speed. It has been shown that the interrelation between tangential strain rate and curvature affects the strain rate dependence of tangential diffusion component of the density-weighted displacement speed. The density-weighted displacement speed and curvature are found to be predominantly negatively correlated throughout the flame brush at all stages of the flame evolution. The relative strengths of the tangential strain rate dependence of the reaction, normal diffusion and tangential diffusion components of the density-weighted displacement speed ultimately determine the nature of correlation between the density-weighted displacement speed and the tangential strain rate. The strain rate and curvature dependences of the density-weighted displacement speed in stratified mixtures are found to be qualitatively similar to the statistics previously obtained for turbulent premixed flames.


2018 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1073-1091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Lai ◽  
Markus Klein ◽  
Nilanjan Chakraborty

Abstract A three-dimensional compressible Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) analysis has been carried out for head-on quenching of a statistically planar stoichiometric methane-air flame by an isothermal inert wall. A multi-step chemical mechanism for methane-air combustion is used for the purpose of detailed chemistry DNS. For head-on quenching of stoichiometric methane-air flames, the mass fractions of major reactant species such as methane and oxygen tend to vanish at the wall during flame quenching. The absence of $\text {OH}$ OH at the wall gives rise to accumulation of carbon monoxide during flame quenching because $\text {CO}$ CO cannot be oxidised anymore. Furthermore, it has been found that low-temperature reactions give rise to accumulation of $\text {HO}_{2}$ HO 2 and $\mathrm {H}_{2}\mathrm {O}_{2}$ H 2 O 2 at the wall during flame quenching. Moreover, these low temperature reactions are responsible for non-zero heat release rate at the wall during flame-wall interaction. In order to perform an in-depth comparison between simple and detailed chemistry DNS results, a corresponding simulation has been carried out for the same turbulence parameters for a representative single-step Arrhenius type irreversible chemical mechanism. In the corresponding simple chemistry simulation, heat release rate vanishes once the flame reaches a threshold distance from the wall. The distributions of reaction progress variable c and non-dimensional temperature T are found to be identical to each other away from the wall for the simple chemistry simulation but this equality does not hold during head-on quenching. The inequality between c (defined based on $\text {CH}_{4}$ CH 4 mass fraction) and T holds both away from and close to the wall for the detailed chemistry simulation but it becomes particularly prominent in the near-wall region. The temporal evolutions of wall heat flux and wall Peclet number (i.e. normalised wall-normal distance of $T = 0.9$ T = 0.9 isosurface) for both simple and detailed chemistry laminar and turbulent cases have been found to be qualitatively similar. However, small differences have been observed in the numerical values of the maximum normalised wall heat flux magnitude $\left ({\Phi }_{\max } \right )_{\mathrm {L}}$ Φ max L and the minimum Peclet number $(Pe_{\min })_{\mathrm {L}}$ ( P e min ) L obtained from simple and detailed chemistry based laminar head-on quenching calculations. Detailed explanations have been provided for the observed differences in behaviours of $\left ({\Phi }_{\max }\right )_{\mathrm {L}}$ Φ max L and $(Pe_{\min })_{\mathrm {L}}$ ( P e min ) L . The usual Flame Surface Density (FSD) and scalar dissipation rate (SDR) based reaction rate closures do not adequately predict the mean reaction rate of reaction progress variable in the near-wall region for both simple and detailed chemistry simulations. It has been found that recently proposed FSD and SDR based reaction rate closures based on a-priori DNS analysis of simple chemistry data perform satisfactorily also for the detailed chemistry case both away from and close to the wall without any adjustment to the model parameters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1055-1066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingyuan Tao ◽  
Haiwen Ge ◽  
Brad VanDerWege ◽  
Peng Zhao

The formation of fuel wall film is a primary cause for efficiency loss and emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons and particulate matters in direct injection engines, especially during cold start. When a premixed flame propagates toward a wall film of liquid fuel, flame structure and propagation could be fundamentally affected by the vaporization flux and the induced thermal and concentration stratifications. It is, therefore, of both fundamental and practical significance to investigate the consequent effect of a wall film on flame quenching. In this work, the interaction of a laminar premixed flame and a fuel wall film has been studied based on one-dimensional direct numerical simulation with detailed chemistry and transport. The mass and energy balance at the wall film interface have been implemented as boundary condition to resolve vaporization. Parametric studies are further conducted with various initial temperatures of 600–800 K, pressures of 7–15 atm, fuel film and wall temperatures of 300–400 K. By comparing the cases with an isothermal dry wall, it is found that the existence of a wall film always promotes flame quenching and causes more emissions. Although quenching distance can vary significantly among conditions, the local equivalence ratio at quenching is largely constant, suggesting the dominant effects of rich mixture and rich flammability limit. By further comparing constant volume and constant pressure conditions, it is observed that pressure and boiling point variation dominate the vaporization boundary layer development and flame quenching, which further suggests that increased pressure during compression stroke in engines can significantly suppress film vaporization. Emissions of unburnt hydrocarbon, soot precursor and low-temperature products before and after flame quenching are also investigated in detail. The results lead to useful insights on the interaction of flame propagation and wall film in well-controlled simplified configurations and shed light on the development of wall film models in three-dimensional in-cylinder combustion simulation.


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