Zone conditional assessment of flame-generated turbulence with DNS database of a turbulent premixed flame

Zone conditional two-fluid equations are derived and validated against a DNS database for a turbulent premixed flame. The conditional statistics of major flow variables are investigated to understand the mechanism of flame-generated turbulence. The flow field in the burned region shows substantially increased, highly anisotropic turbulence to conserve mass through a flamelet surface. The transverse component may be larger than the axial component for a distributed pdf of the flamelet orientation angle in the middle of the flame brush. The opposite occurs due to redistribution of turbulent kinetic energy and flamelet orientation mostly normal with respect to the mean flow at the end of the flame brush. The major source or sink terms of turbulent kinetic energy are the interfacial transfer by the mean reaction rate and the work terms induced by fluctuating pressure and velocity on the flame surface. Ad hoc modeling of some interfacial terms may be required for further application of the two-fluid model for modeling turbulence in turbulent premixed combustion simulations.     

Conditional moment closure prediction of soot formation in turbulent, nonpremixed ethylene flames

Results obtained from incorporating a semiempirical soot model into a first-order conditional moment closure (CMC) approach to modeling turbulent nonpremixed flames of ethylene and air are presented. Soot formation is determined via the solution of two transport equations for soot mass fraction and particle number density, with acetylene and benzene employed as the incipient species responsible for soot nucleation, and the concentrations of these species calculated using a detailed gas-phase kinetic scheme involving 463 reactions and 70 species. The study focuses on the influence of differential diffusion of soot particles on soot volume fraction predictions. The results of calculations are compared with experimental data for three sooting ethylene flames and, in general, predictions of mixing and temperature fields within the three flames show good agreement with data. Soot volume fraction predictions are found to be in significantly better accord with data when differential diffusion is accounted for in the CMC-based soot model, supporting the importance of such effects in sooting flames, as previously noted by Kronenburg et al. in relation to methane combustion. Overall, the study demonstrates that the CMC-based soot model, when used in conjunction with a model of differential diffusion effects, is capable of accurately predicting soot formation in turbulent nonpremixed ethylene-air flames.     

A new approach to model turbulent lifted CH4/air flame issuing in a vitiated coflow using conditional moment closure coupled with an extinction model

In this article, conditional moment closure model (CMC) with detailed chemistry is used to model lifted turbulent methane flame in a high temperature and vitiated coflow and to predict flame lift-off height. The flow and mixing field are predicted by a 2D in-house code employing a k–ε turbulence model (RANS) with modified constant C_ε2. The first-order CMC model on its own could not capture the behavior of the lifted flame. Large eddy simulations (LES) coupled with second-order CMC model would be a promising alternative but the objective here was to improve low-cost simulations based on RANS and first-order CMC to address realistic problems. Hence, an extinction model has been incorporated in the first-order CMC to improve its predictions and is referred in this paper as CMCE. In the CMCE model, flame is assumed to be extinguished when the ratio of flow time scale to the chemical time scale falls below a critical value. Predicted lift-off height by the CMCE model agrees very well with the experimental results. There is a significant improvement in temperature and species distributions in both axial and radial directions with the implementation of the CMCE model. Further, the model is extended to predict the flame lift-off height for various coflow temperatures and jet velocities by using scaling ratios. With these modifications, the lift-off heights predicted by the CMCE model match well with the experimental results for a wide range of jet velocities and coflow temperatures. Results from both CMC and CMCE models are compared against the experimental data to show the importance of the extinction model. Flame stabilization process indicates that flame stabilizes on the contour of mean stoichiometric mixture fraction where axial mean velocity equals the turbulent burning velocity.     

Large eddy simulation and finite-volume conditional moment closure modelling of a turbulent lifted H2/N2 flame

Large eddy simulations with three-dimensional finite-volume Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) model are performed for a hydrogen/nitrogen lifted flame with detailed chemical mechanism. The emphasis is laid on the influences of mesh resolution and convection scheme of finite-volume CMC equations on predictions of reactive scalars and unsteady flame dynamics. The results show that the lift-off height is underestimated and the reactive scalars are over-predicted with coarser CMC mesh. It is also found that further refinement of the CMC mesh would not considerably improve the results. The time sequences of the most reactive and stoichiometric hydroxyl radical mass fractions indicate that finer CMC mesh can capture more unsteady details than the coarser CMC mesh. Moreover, the coarse CMC mesh has lower conditional scalar dissipation rate, which would promote the earlier auto-ignition of the flame base. Besides, the effects of the convection scheme for the CMC equations (i.e., upwind, central differencing and their blends) on the lifted flame characteristics are also investigated. It is shown that different convection schemes lead to limited differences on the time-averaged temperature, mixture fraction and species mass fractions. Moreover, the root-mean square values of hydrogen and hydroxyl mass fractions show larger deviation from the measurements with hybrid upwind and central differencing scheme, especially around the flame base. Furthermore, the distributions of the numerical fluxes on the CMC faces also show obvious distinctions between the upwind and blending schemes. The budget analysis of the individual CMC terms shows that a sequence of CMC faces has comparable contributions with upwind scheme. However, with the hybrid schemes, the instantaneous flux is dominantly from limited CMC faces. The reactivity of a CMC cell is more easily to be affected by its neighbors when the upwind scheme is used.     

Modelling of species in hood fires by conditional moment closure

Carbon monoxide, the chief killer in fires, and other species are modelled for a series of enclosure fires. The conditions emulate building fires where CO is formed in the rich, turbulent, nonpremixed flame and is transported frozen to lean mixtures by the ceiling jet which is cooled by radiation and dilution. Conditional moment closure modelling is used and computational domain minimisation criteria are developed which reduce the computational cost of this method. The predictions give good agreement for CO and other species in the lean, quenched-gas stream, holding promise that this method may provide a practical means of modelling real, three-dimensional fire situations.     

基于二阶矩封闭湍流模型的非预混湍流火焰的数值模拟

应用二阶矩封闭湍流模型进行了湍流非预混钝体稳定火焰数值模拟的研究.应用LRR-IP模型,JM模型,SSG模型以及两个修正后的LRR-IP模型等二阶矩封闭湍流模型,进行了钝体稳定火焰数值模拟的研究.对于复杂的钝体稳定火焰,一些模型无法给出令人满意的结果,而且不同模型的结果差异很大.在研究中,湍流燃烧模型采用了化学平衡模型和假设PDF模型.研究结果表明,对于钝体稳定火焰,SSG模型以及两个修正后的LRR-IP模型要优于其他几个二阶矩封闭湍流模型.     

DNS of a premixed turbulent V flame and LES of a ducted flame using a FSD-PDF subgrid scale closure with FPI-tabulated chemistry

Two complementary simulations of premixed turbulent flames are discussed. Low Reynolds number two-dimensional direct numerical simulation of a premixed turbulent V flame is first performed, to further analyze the behavior of various flame quantities and to study key ingredients of premixed turbulent combustion modeling. Flame surface density, subgrid-scale variance of progress variables, and unresolved turbulent fluxes are analyzed. These simulations include fully detailed chemistry from a flame-generated tabulation (FPI) and the analysis focuses on the dynamics of the thin flame front. Then, a novel subgrid scale closure for large eddy simulation of premixed turbulent combustion (FSD-PDF) is proposed. It combines the flame surface density (FSD) approach with a presumed probability density function (PDF) of the progress variable that is used in FPI chemistry tabulation. The FSD is useful for introducing in the presumed PDF the influence of the spatially filtered thin reaction zone evolving within the subgrid. This is achieved via the exact relation between the PDF and the FSD. This relation involves the conditional filtered average of the magnitude of the gradient of the progress variable. In the modeling, this conditional filtered mean is approximated from the filtered gradient of the progress variable of the FPI laminar flame. Balance equations providing mean and variance of the progress variable together with the measure of the filtered gradient are used to presume the PDF. A three-dimensional larger Reynolds number flow configuration (ORACLES experiment) is then computed with FSD-PDF and the results are compared with measurements.     

Conditional reaction rate in a lifted turbulent H2/N2 flame using direct numerical simulation

In this study, reaction rate sub-models are investigated in the framework of conditional moment closure (CMC) using the direct numerical simulation (DNS) database of a lifted turbulent H₂/N₂ flame. The DNS code solves the fully compressible Navier–Stokes equation system. A 9 species and 19-step mechanism for hydrogen combustion is adopted. The comparison of the DNS results and the measurements shows that, in spite of the under predicted lift-off height, the predictions of the conditional means are satisfactory. Two improved models for the conditionally averaged reaction rate are investigated a-priori. The doubly conditioned reaction rate accounts for the fluctuations with two conditioning variables while the second-order closure is based on the Taylor expansion. It is shown that both of the models give promising results.     

Direct numerical simulations of non-premixed ethylene–air flames: Local flame extinction criterion

Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of ethylene/air diffusion flame extinctions in decaying two-dimensional turbulence were performed. A Damköhler-number-based flame extinction criterion as provided by classical large activation energy asymptotic (AEA) theory is assessed for its validity in predicting flame extinction and compared to one based on Chemical Explosive Mode Analysis (CEMA) of the detailed chemistry. The DNS code solves compressible flow conservation equations using high order finite difference and explicit time integration schemes. The ethylene/air chemistry is simulated with a reduced mechanism that is generated based on the directed relation graph (DRG) based methods along with stiffness removal. The numerical configuration is an ethylene fuel strip embedded in ambient air and exposed to a prescribed decaying turbulent flow field. The emphasis of this study is on the several flame extinction events observed in contrived parametric simulations. A modified viscosity and changing pressure (MVCP) scheme was adopted in order to artificially manipulate the probability of flame extinction. Using MVCP, pressure was changed from the baseline case of 1 atm to 0.1 and 10 atm. In the high pressure MVCP case, the simulated flame is extinction-free, whereas in the low pressure MVCP case, the simulated flame features frequent extinction events and is close to global extinction. Results show that, despite its relative simplicity and provided that the global flame activation temperature is correctly calibrated, the AEA-based flame extinction criterion can accurately predict the simulated flame extinction events. It is also found that the AEA-based criterion provides predictions of flame extinction that are consistent with those provided by a CEMA-based criterion. This study supports the validity of a simple Damköhler-number-based criterion to predict flame extinction in engineering-level CFD models.     

Effects of hydrogen enrichment on CH4/Air turbulent swirling premixed flames in a cuboid combustor

Effects of H₂-enrichment on structures of CH₄/air turbulent swirling premixed flames affected by high intensity turbulence in a gas turbine model combsutor are investigated by conducting direct numerical simulations. Two stoichiometric mixture conditions, of which volume ratio of CH₄:H₂ = 50:50 and 80:20, are simulated by considering a reduced chemistry (25 species and 111 reactions). Results showed qualitatively different flame shapes and reaction zone characteristics between the cases. For the higher H₂-ratio case, the flame is stabilized both in the inner and outer shear layers. For the lower H₂-ratio case, the flame is stabilized only in the inner shear layer and extinction occurs in the outer shear layer. Comparison of the reaction zone characteristics with unstrained and strained laminar flames in phase space showed that H₂ mass fraction for the lower H₂-ratio case and reaction rate profiles for both cases deviate from the corresponding laminar values. Analysis of fuel species conservation equation suggests that the turbulent transports are substantially influential to determine local and global flame structures. These findings would be useful for designing practical H₂-enriched gas turbine combustor in the aspect of flame structures under high intensity turbulence.     

Effect of turbulent motions at different length scales on turbulent premixed swirl-stabilised flame topology

Three-dimensional direct numerical simulation data of H₂-air turbulent swirling premixed combustion at two different swirl numbers are analysed to investigate the local reaction zone morphology and its relation with local turbulent motions at different length scales. The effect of small scale turbulent mixing on local flames is investigated, and the results have shown that the contribution of microscale turbulent diffusivity on the local flamelet is insignificant, although there is some evidence of flame thinning for the higher swirl number case. The flame morphology such as high-level convolution and interacting flames, on the other hand, shows greater influence on local flamelets, suggesting the importance of local reaction zone topology on overall combustion processes. The local reaction zones are analysed by using the shapefinders to quantify their topology. Although the shapefinders showed various local reaction zone shapes consisting of “pancakes” and “tubes” and intermissive intense reaction zone distributions, the smallest characteristic length scale shows that the local reaction zones are thin. Finally, the relationship between these local reaction zone topology and turbulent motions at different sizes were discussed. The local reaction zone topology has a direct relation with Taylor microscale, integral length scale and their associated velocity scale, whereas almost no correlation is observed with Kolmogorov length scale, in the presence of inhomogeneous turbulence and strong mean shears. The present results suggest the importance of Taylor microscale on flame surface topology, which is often understated in turbulent combustion modelling frameworks.     

有辐射热损射流扩散火焰条件矩模型数值模拟

假设火焰辐射区域为光学薄，将辐射计算的代数模型嵌入到条件矩模型中（CMC（rad）），对甲烷－空气射流扩散值班火焰进行了模拟。并将此模型的模拟结果分别与实验和未考虑辐射热损的条件矩模型（CMC（ad））的结果进行了比较。结果表明采用代数模型计算辐射热损失是合适的，且考虑辐射的条件矩模型对温度场和NO的浓度的模拟结果相比未考虑辐射热损条件矩模型的模拟结果，与实验结果符合得要好。     

微尺度条件下反复熄燃火焰特性的实验研究

在可视化微尺度燃烧实验台上进行甲烷和氧气的燃烧试验,利用高速数码照相机捕捉到了火焰面在微通道内的传播过程,测试分析了不同进气流量下反复熄燃火焰的可燃极限、火焰传播速度和火焰间隔时间,获得了反复熄燃火焰(Flames with repetitive extinction and ignition, FREI)的燃烧特性。结果表明,随着甲烷进气流速的增加,可以形成FREI火焰的氧气进气流速范围也在扩大;在甲烷进气流速一定的情况下,随着氧气进气流速的增加,火焰的传播速度也逐渐增加,并且火焰重复点燃的间隔时间呈现先变大后逐渐变小的规律,即火焰重复点燃的频率先变慢后又逐渐变快直至火焰熄灭。     

A DNS study of hydrogen/air swirling premixed flames with different equivalence ratios

Hydrogen/air swirling premixed flames with different equivalence ratios are studied using direct numerical simulation. A fourth-order explicit Runge–Kutta method for time integration and an eighth-order central differencing scheme for spatial discretization are used to solve the full Navier–Stokes (N–S) equation system. A 9 species 19-step reduced mechanism for hydrogen/air combustion is adopted. The flames are stabilized with the help of a recirculation zone characterizing a high swirling flow. The vortex structures of the swirling premixed flames are presented. The flame structures are investigated in terms of the flame front curvature and tangential strain rate probability density functions (pdfs). The local flamelet temperature profiles are also extracted randomly along the flame front and compared with the corresponding laminar flame temperature profile. In order to study preferential diffusion effects, direct numerical simulation of two additional freely propagating planar flames in isotropic turbulence is conducted. Preferential diffusion effects observed in the planar flames are suppressed in the swirling flames. Further analysis confirms that the coherent small-scale eddies play important roles in the interactions between turbulence and the flame front. They are able to change the dynamic properties of the flame font and lead to enhanced burning intensity in the flame front with negative curvature for both stoichiometric and fuel-lean flames.     

DNS investigation on flame structure and scalar dissipation of a supersonic lifted hydrogen jet flame in heated coflow

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a three-dimensional spatially-developing supersonic lifted hydrogen jet flame has been conducted in this paper. The scalar structure of the lifted flame is investigated through instantaneous images and conditional means of combustion statistics. And then the scalar dissipation rate and its implications on the flamelet-based combustion modeling are analyzed in detail. It can be found that most of the heat release occurs in the subsonic region. However, distributed reaction pockets exist in the sonic mixing layer due to the rolled up vortices. The magnitude of conditional compression or expansion rate of the fluid presents comparable to the corresponding heat release rate, and takes a great influence on the flame temperature in the high speed reacting flow. The probability density functions of mean conditional and unconditional scalar dissipation rate prove to qualitatively agree with the presumed log-normal distribution, while a little skewed to the higher scalar dissipation rate in the sonic mixing layer. The conditional mean scalar dissipation rate presents to be radial dependent at the flame base, especially in the fuel lean mixture. The DNS results show good agreement with the trends of the flamelet calculations; however, the amplitudes of temperature are far lower than the corresponding flamelet statistics due to finite rate reaction and expansion of the high speed reacting flow.     

Direct numerical simulation of hydrogen addition in turbulent premixed Bunsen flames using flamelet-generated manifold reduction

Direct numerical simulations of a lean premixed turbulent Bunsen flame with hydrogen addition have been performed. We show the results for a case with equivalence ratio of 0.7 and a molar fractional distribution of 40% H₂ and 60% CH₄. The flamelet-generated manifold technique is used to reduce the chemistry; flamelets with different equivalence ratios and inflow temperature are used to account for stretch effects that are enhanced by preferential diffusion. The three-dimensional simulation clearly shows enhanced burning velocity in regions convex toward the reactants and reduced burning velocity with possible extinction in regions concave toward the reactants. To obtain these effects it was found to be necessary to include two three-dimensional transport equations with essentially different diffusivities. This point is illustrated by comparison of the results with cases in which either a single transport equation was used or two transport equations with minor differences in diffusivities were used. These latter cases incorporated preferential diffusion in the 1D flamelets (and thus in the manifold), but not in the three-dimensional transport. Thus the three-dimensional preferential diffusion effects are shown to enhance curvature and thereby to increase the turbulent burning velocity and reduce the mean flame height. In addition the turbulent burning velocity increases because hydrogen addition leads to a larger laminar flamelet consumption speed. To demonstrate this second effect, results of the cases mentioned above are compared to the results of simulations of the Bunsen flame with 0% hydrogen added to the fuel.     

Effects of Lewis number on flame surface density transport in turbulent premixed combustion

The transport of flame surface density (FSD) in turbulent premixed flames has been studied using a database obtained from Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). Three-dimensional freely propagating developing statistically planar turbulent premixed flames have been examined over a range of global Lewis numbers from 0.6 to 1.2. Simplified chemistry has been used and the emphasis is on the effects of Lewis number on FSD transport in the context of Reynolds-averaged closure modelling. Under the same initial conditions of turbulence, flames with low Lewis numbers are found to exhibit counter-gradient transport of FSD, whereas flames with higher Lewis numbers tend to exhibit gradient transport of FSD. Stronger heat release effects for lower Lewis number flames are found to lead to an increase in the positive (negative) value of the dilatation rate (normal strain rate) term in the FSD transport equation with decreasing Lewis number. The contribution of flame curvature to FSD transport is found to be influenced significantly by the effects of Lewis number on the curvature dependence of the magnitude of the reaction progress variable gradient, and on the combined reaction and normal diffusion components of displacement speed. The modelling of the various terms of the FSD transport equation has been analysed in detail and the performance of existing models is assessed with respect to the terms assembled from corresponding quantities extracted from DNS data. Based on this assessment, suitable models are identified which are able to address the effects of non-unity Lewis number on FSD transport, and new or modified models are suggested wherever necessary.     

Assessment of model assumptions and budget terms of the unsteady flamelet equations for a turbulent reacting jet-in-cross-flow

An a priori analysis of the flamelet model for diffusion flames is conducted to systematically assess model assumptions that are associated with the asymptotic expansion, the omission of higher-order expansion terms, the consideration of preferential diffusion effects, and the one-dimensional flamelet representation. For this, a recent direct numerical simulation database of a reacting hydrogen/air jet-in-cross-flow (JICF) by Grout et al. [15,16] is used. The full flamelet equation for temperature, exact to the order of the Eulerian transport equation and general to different definitions of the mixture fraction, is derived. Analysis of mixture fraction conditioned profiles of temperature and scalar dissipation rate along the jet trajectory identified different ignition and flame stabilization scenarios on the windward and leeward sides of the reacting JICF. A balance analysis of the temperature flamelet equation is conducted to quantify contributions in flame-aligned and flame-orthogonal directions. Consistent with the flamelet assumption, it is shown that terms arising from scalar diffusion, heat-release, and species-diffusion-induced enthalpy flux are the dominant contributions, while the flame-aligned preferential diffusion promotes entrainment of heat into the flamelet structure. For the current JICF-configuration, it is found that contributions along the flame-orthogonal direction are on average negligible.