A novel method for chemistry tabulation of strained premixed/stratified flames based on principal component analysis

The principal component analysis （PCA） is used to analyze the high dimen- sional chemistry data of laminar premixed/stratified flames under strain effects. The first few principal components （PCs） with larger contribution ratios axe chosen as the tabu- lated scalars to build the look-up chemistry table. Prior tests show that strained premixed flame structure can be well reconstructed. To highlight the physical meanings of the tabu- lated scalars in stratified flames, a modified PCA method is developed, where the mixture fraction is used to replace one of the PCs with the highest correlation coefficient. The other two tabulated scalars are then modified with the Schmidt orthogonalization. The modified tabulated scalars not only have clear physical meanings, but also contain passive scalars. The PCA method has good commonality, and can be extended for building the thermo-chemistry table including strain rate effects when different fuels are used.

Large eddy simulation of turbulent premixed and stratified combustion using flame surface density model coupled with tabulation method

Large eddy simulations(LESs) are performed to investigate the Cambridge premixed and stratified flames, SwB1 and SwB5, respectively. The flame surface density(FSD) model incorporated with two different wrinkling factor models, i.e., the Muppala and Charlette2 wrinkling factor models, is used to describe combustion/turbulence interaction, and the flamelet generated manifolds(FGM) method is employed to determine major scalars. This coupled sub-grid scale(SGS) combustion model is named as the FSD-FGM model. The FGM method can provide the detailed species in the flame which cannot be obtained from the origin FSD model. The LES results show that the FSD-FGM model has the ability of describing flame propagation, especially for stratified flames. The Charlette2 wrinkling factor model performs better than the Muppala wrinkling factor model in predicting the flame surface area change by the turbulence.The combustion characteristics are analyzed in detail by the flame index and probability distributions of the equivalence ratio and the orientation angle, which confirms that for the investigated stratified flame, the dominant combustion modes in the upstream and downstream regions are the premixed mode and the back-supported mode, respectively.

Large eddy simulation of turbulent premixed piloted flame using artificial thickened flame model coupled with tabulated chemistry

A sub-grid scale(SGS) combustion model, which combines the artificial thickened flame(ATF) model with the flamelet generated manifold(FGM) tabulation method, is proposed. Based on the analysis of laminar flame structures, two self-contained flame sensors are used to track the diffusion and reaction processes with different spatial scales in the flame front, respectively. The dynamic formulation for the proposed SGS combustion model is also performed. Large eddy simulations(LESs) of Bunsen flame F3 are used to evaluate the different SGS combustion models. The results show that the proposed SGS model has the ability in predicting the distributions of temperature and velocity reasonably, while the predictions for the distributions of some species need further improvement. The snapshots of instantaneous normalized progress variables reveal that the flame is more remarkably and severely wrinkled at the flame tip for flame F3.More satisfactory results obtained by the dynamic model indicate that it can preserve the premixed flame propagation characteristics better.

Structural Characteristics of Vessels in Three Families of Cycadopsida

The pinna of Cycasferruginea F.N. Wei （Cycadaceae）, pinnas or rachises ofStangeria eriopus （Kune） Baill. （Stangeriaceae）, Dioon holmgrenii De Luca, Sabato ＆ Vazq. Torres, Macrozamia moorei F. Muell. ex C. Moore （Zamiaceae） were macerated and dissociated by Jeffrey＇s technique, rinsed with water, dehydrated and gold-plated for observation with scanning electron microscopes. The results showed that the pinna and rachis of the leaf tissues of the four cycad species possess many vessel elements and a few tracheid elements in the conducting tissue of the xylem. Annular, spiral, scalariform, pitted and reticulate vessels and some transitional types, including scalariform-pitted, scalariform-reticulate and reticulate-pitted vessels, were observed in the conducting tissues. The characteristics of the vessels of each species, and the evolutionary relation of four genera of cycads were analyzed. Compared with those of angiosperms, the structural characters of vessels of cycad are at the moderate level of evolution and more advanced than some primitive taxa of angiosperms and ferns. Vessels have been discovered in many genera of ferns, which are even more primitive than cycads. In many ferns, only vessel elements, but no tracheids are found in vascular tissue. In the present study, the authors discovered vessels in different genera of three families ofcycads which showed that the existence of vessels in primitive plant taxa is a widespread phenomenon. Vessel elements in vascular tissues of cycads have probably allowed cycads to adapt to various environmental stresses and enabled their persistence over their long evolutionary history. Cycads are the most primitive of the extant seed plants and the widespread existence of vessels in the group has broad implications for plant systematics, evolution and comparative morphology.