Modelling combustion in spark ignition engines with special emphasis on near wall flame quenching

A flame front is quenched when approaching a cold wall due to excessive heat loss. Accurate computation of combustion rate in such situations requires accounting for near wall flame quenching. Combustion models, developed without considering wall effects, cannot be used for wall bounded combustion modelling, as it leads to wall flame acceleration problem. In this work, a new model was developed to estimate the near wall combustion rate, accommodating quenching effects. The developed correlation was then applied to predict the combustion in two spark ignition engines in combination with the famous Bray–Moss–Libby (BML) combustion model. BML model normally fails when applied to wall bounded combustion due to flame wall acceleration. Results show that the proposed quenching correlation has significantly improved the performance of BML model in wall bounded combustion. As a second step, in order to further enhance the performance, the BML model was modified with the use of Kolmogorov–Petrovski–Piskunov analysis and fractal theory. In which, a new dynamic formulation is proposed to evaluate the mean flame wrinkling scale, there by accounting for spatial inhomogeneity of turbulence. Results indicate that the combination of the quenching correlation and the modified BML model has been successful in eliminating wall flame acceleration problem, while accurately predicting in-cylinder pressure rise, mass burn rates and heat release rates.

LES Analysis of CO Emissions from a High Pressure Siemens Gas Turbine Prototype Combustor at Part Load

This work contributes to the understanding of mechanisms that lead to increased carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in gas turbine combustion systems. Large-eddy simulations (LES) of a full scale high pressure prototype Siemens gas turbine combustor at three staged part load operating conditions are presented, demonstrating the ability to predict carbon monoxide pollutants from a complex technical system by investigating sources of incomplete CO oxidation. Analytically reduced chemistry is applied for the accurate pollutant prediction together with the dynamic thickened flame model. LES results show that carbon monoxide emissions at the probe location are predicted in good agreement with the available test data, indicating two operating points with moderate pollutant levels and one operating point with CO concentrations below 10 ppm. Large mixture inhomogeneities are identified in the combustion chamber for all operating points. The investigation of mixture formation indicates that fuel-rich mixtures mainly emerge from the pilot stage resulting in high equivalence ratio streaks that lead to large CO levels at the combustor outlet. Flame quenching due to flame-wall-interaction are found to be of no relevance for CO in the investigated combustion chamber. Post-processing with Lagrangian tracer particles shows that cold air—from effusion cooling or stages that are not being supplied with fuel—lead to significant flame quenching, as mixtures are shifted to leaner equivalence ratios and the oxidation of CO is inhibited.

The Effect of Stratification Ratio on the Macrostructure of Stratified Swirl Flames: Experimental and Numerical Study

The present paper reports experimental and numerical analyses of the macrostructures featured by a stratified swirling flame for varying stratification ratio (SR). The studies are performed with the Beihang Axial Swirler Independently Stratified (BASIS) burner, a novel double-swirled full-scale burner developed at Beihang University. Experimentally, it is found that depending on the ratio between the equivalence ratios of the methane–air mixtures from the two swirlers, the flame stabilizes with three different shapes: attached V-flame, attached stratified flame, and lifted flame. In order to better understand the mechanisms leading to the three macrostructures, large eddy simulations (LES) are performed via the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM using the incompressible solver ReactingFoam. Changing SR, simulation results show good agreement with experimentally observed time-averaged flame shapes, demonstrating that the incompressible LES are able to fully characterize the different flame behaviors observed in stratified burners. When the LES account for heat loss from walls, they better capture the experimentally observed flame quenching in the outer shear layer (OSL). Finally, insights into the flame dynamics are provided by analyzing probes located near the two separate streams.