Scalar Forcing Methodology for Direct Numerical Simulations of Turbulent Stratified Mixture Combustion

Scalar 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.

Experimental investigation of isothermal and reacting flow characteristics downstream of axisymmetric bluff body stabilizers under stratified or fully premixed inlet mixture conditions

The current work describes an experimental investigation of isothermal and turbulent reacting flow field characteristics downstream of axisymmetric bluff body stabilizers under a variety of inlet mixture conditions. Fully premixed and stratified flames established downstream of this double cavity premixer/burner configuration were measured and assessed under lean and ultra-lean operating conditions. The aim of this thesis was to further comprehend the impact of stratifying the inlet fuelair mixture on the reacting wake characteristics for a range of practical stabilizers under a variety of inlet fuel-air settings. In the first part of this thesis, the isothermal mean and turbulent flow features downstream of a variety of axisymmetric baffles was initially examined. The effect of different shapes, (cone or disk), blockage ratios, (0.23 and 0.48), and rim thicknesses of these baffles was assessed. The variations of the recirculation zones, back flow velocity magnitude, annular jet ejection angles, wake development, entrainment efficiency, as well as several turbulent flow features were obtained, evaluated and appraised. Next, a comparative examination of the counterpart turbulent cold fuel-air mixing performance and characteristics of stratified against fully-premixed operation was performed for a wide range of baffle geometries and inlet mixture conditions. Scalar mixing and entrainment properties were investigated at the exit plane, at the bluff body annular shear layer, at the reattachment region and along the developing wake were investigated. These isothermal studies provided the necessary background information for clarifying the combustion properties and interpreting the trends in the counterpart turbulent reacting fields. Subsequently, for selected bluff bodies, flame structures and behavior for operation with a variety of reacting conditions were demonstrated. The effect of inlet fuel-air mixture settings, fuel type and bluff body geometry on wake development, flame shape, anchoring and structure, temperatures and combustion efficiencies, over lean and close to blow-off conditions, was presented and analyzed. For the obtained measurements infrared radiation, particle image velocimetry, laser doppler velocimetry, chemiluminescence imaging set-ups, together with Fouriertransform infrared spectroscopy, thermocouples and global emission analyzer instrumentation was employed. This helped to delineate a number of factors that affectcold flow fuel-air mixing, flame anchoring topologies, wake structure development and overall burner performance. The presented data will also significantly assist the validation of computational methodologies for combusting flows and the development of turbulence-chemistry interaction models.

Large Eddy Simulation of a Turbulent Spray Jet Flame Using Filtered Tabulated Chemistry

This work presents Large Eddy Simulations of the unconfined CORIA Rouen Spray Burner, fed with liquid n-heptane and air. Turbulent combustion modeling is based on the Filtered TAbulated Chemistry model for LES (F-TACLES) formalism, designed to capture the propagation speed of turbulent stratified flames. Initially dedicated to gaseous combustion, the filtered flamelet model is challenged for the first time in a turbulent spray flame configuration. Two meshes are employed. The finest grid, where both flame thickness and wrinkling are resolved, aims to challenge the chemistry tabulation procedure. At the opposite the coarse mesh does not allow full resolution of the flame thickness and exhibits significant unresolved contributions of subgrid scale flame wrinkling. Both LES solutions are extensively compared against experimental data. For both nonreacting and reacting conditions, the flow and spray aerodynamical properties are well captured by the two simulations. More interesting, the LES predicts accurately the flame lift-off height for both fine and coarse grid conditions. It confirms that the modeling methodology is able to capture the filtered turbulent flame propagation speed in a two-phase flow environment and within grid conditions representative of practical applications. Differences, observed for the droplet temperature, seem related to the evaporation model assumptions.