Effect of Hydrogen-Rich Fuels on Turbulent Combustion of Advanced Gas Turbine

The effect of high hydrogen fuel on turbulent combustion in advanced gas turbine combustor with our newly designed arrayed-vanes premixer was studied by large eddy simulation(LES).The dynamic Smagorinsky model is used to calculate the subgrid stress.Finite-rate chemistry is included using a four steps mechanisms.A thickened flame model was used to deal with the reaction rate.The transport and thermal properties are obtained by CHEMKIN packages.The results show that with the increase of hydrogen content,the wake recirculation zone and central toroidal recirculation zone separate.The turbulent fluctuations of H_(2)/air flame first decreases and then increases.For the response of turbulent flame,the results show that the flame brush is narrow and short with the increase of hydrogen content.When the hydrogen content is low,the syngas/air flame can also propagate in the high-speed flow.Therefore,for different flames,the position of outer propagating flame is almost the same.The results also show that the fluctuation of flame intensity increases with the increase of hydrogen content.Although the increase of hydrogen content shortens the chemical reaction time and suppresses the perturbation of turbulent eddies,the cellular instability may further enhance the fluctuation of flame intensity.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF METHANE-AIR TURBULENT JET FLAME USING A NEW SECOND-ORDER MOMENT MODEL

A new second-order moment model for turbulent combustion is applied in the simulation of methane-air turbulent jet flame. The predicted results are compared with the experimental results and with those predicted using the well-known EBU-Arrhenius model and the original second-order moment model. The comparison shows the advantage of the new model that it requires almost the same computational storage and time as that of the original second-order moment model, but its modeling results are in better agreement with experiments than those using other models. Hence, the new second-order moment model is promising in modeling turbulent combustion with NOx formation with finite reaction rate for engineering application.

An implicit relation between temperature and reaction rate in the SLFM

The Arrhenius law implies that reaction rate is a continuous function of temperature. However,the steady laminar flamelet model(SLFM) does not explicitly give this functional relationship. The present study addresses this relation in the SLFM.It is found that reaction rate is not continuous in the mixture-fraction space.As a result,the SLFM is unable to predict local extinction and reignition.Furthermore,we use the unstable branch of the'S-curve'to fill the gap between steady burning branch and extinction one,and find that this modification leads to a continuous dependent of reaction rate on temperature.Thus the modified SLFM can describe the local extinction and reignition.

CFD study of non-premixed swirling burners: Effect of turbulence models

This research investigates a numerical simulation of swirling turbulent non-premixed combustion.The effects on the combustion characteristics are examined with three turbulence models:namely as the Reynolds stress model,spectral turbulence analysis and Re-Normalization Group.In addition,the P-1 and discrete ordinate(DO)models are used to simulate the radiative heat transfer in this model.The governing equations associated with the required boundary conditions are solved using the numerical model.The accuracy of this model is validated with the published experimental data and the comparison elucidates that there is a reasonable agreement between the obtained values from this model and the corresponding experimental quantities.Among different models proposed in this research,the Reynolds stress model with the Probability Density Function(PDF)approach is more accurate(nearly up to 50%)than other turbulent models for a swirling flow field.Regarding the effect of radiative heat transfer model,it is observed that the discrete ordinate model is more precise than the P-1 model in anticipating the experimental behavior.This model is able to simulate the subcritical nature of the isothermal flow as well as the size and shape of the internal recirculation induced by the swirl due to combustion.

Visual analytics of combustion on time-varying turbulent-flow

Visualization is crucial for analyzing the turbulent combustion simulation.Time-varying data allows us to investigate the evolution process of the turbulent flow field.To study the combustion effects,we calculated the enstrophy of the flow field since high enstrophy region can display valuable features,and extract components based on these features.We isolated large components to track their behaviors and characterized them using volume and spatial locations,which helps scientists to explore the dynamics and temporal changes of intense events individually.We analyzed the components’structures and visualized them in contouring and statistical charts.

Review on Large Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Premixed Combustion in Tubes

This paper reviews the existing knowledge on the large eddy simulation(LES) of turbulent premixed combustion in empty tubes and obstructed tubes. From the view of model development in LES, this review comprehensively analyzes the development history and applicability of the important Sub-Grid Scale(SGS) viscosity models and SGS combustion models. LES is also used to combine flow and combustion models to reproduce industrial explosion including deflagration and detonation and the transition from deflagration to detonation(DDT). The discussion about models and applications presented here leads readers to understand the progress of LES in the explosion of tube and reveals the deficiencies in this area.

Large eddy simulation of hydrogen/air scramjet combustion using tabulated thermo-chemistry approach

Large eddy simulations （LES） have been performed to investigate the flow and combustion fields in the scramjet of the German Aerospace Center （DLR）. Turbulent combustion is mod- eled by the tabulated thermo-chemistry approach in combination with the presumed probability density function （PDF）. A/3-function is used to model the distribution of the mixture fraction, while two different PDFs, g-function （Model I） and //-function （Model II）, are applied to model the reaction progress. Temperature is obtained by solving filtered energy transport equation and the reaction rate of the progress variable is rescaled by pressure to consider the effects of compressibil- ity. The adaptive mesh refinement （AMR） technique is used to properly capture shock waves, boundary layers, shear layers and flame structures. Statistical results of temperature and velocity predicted by Model II show better accuracy than that predicted by Model I. The results of scatter points and mixture fraction-conditional variables indicate the significant differences between Model I and Model II. It is concluded that second moment information in the presumed PDF of the reaction progress is very important in the simulation of supersonic combustion. It is also found that an unstable flame with extinction and ignition develops in the shear layers of bluff body and a fuel- rich partially premixed flame stabilizes in the central recirculation bubble.

Effect of turbulence on NO formation in swirling combustion

Turbulence affects both combustion and NO formation. Fluctuation correlations are ideally used for quantitative analysis. From the instantaneous chemical reaction rate expression,ignoring the third-order correlation terms, the averaged reaction rate will have four terms, including the term of averaged-variable product, a concentration fluctuation correlation term, and temperature-concentration fluctuation correlation term. If the reaction-rate coefficient is denoted as K, the temperature fluctuation would be included in the K fluctuation. In order to quantitatively study the effect of turbulence on NO formation in methane-air swirling combustion, various turbulencechemistry models are tested. The magnitudes of various correlations and their effects on the time-averaged reaction rate are calculated and analyzed, and the simulation results are compared with the experimental measurement data. The results show that among various correlation moments, the correlation between the reaction-rate coefficient K fluctuation with the concentration fluctuation is most important and is a strong nonlinear term.

Numerical simulations of turbulent flows in aeroramp injector/gas-pilot flame scramjet

To uncover the internal flow characteristics in an ethylene-fueled aeroramp injector/gaspilot（ARI/G-P）flame scramjet,a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes（RANS）solver is constructed under a hybrid polyhedral cell finite volume frame.The shear stress transport（SST）k-x model is used to predict the turbulence,while the Overmann’s compressibility corrected laminar flamelet model is adopted to simulate the turbulent combustion.Nonreactive computations for Case 1（G-P jet on）,Case 2（ARI jets on）,and Case 3（both ARI and G-P jets on）were conducted to analyze the mixing mechanism,while reactive Cases 4–7 at equivalent ratios of 0.380,0.278,0.199 and0.167 respectively were calculated to investigate the flame structure and combustion modes.The numerical results are compared well to those of the experiments.It is shown that the G-P jet plays significant role in both the fuel/air mixing and flame holding processes;the combustion for the four reactive cases takes place intensively in the regions downstream of the ARI/G-P unit;Cases 4 and 5are under subsonic combustion mode,whereas Cases 6 and 7 are mode transition critical and supersonic combustion cases,respectively;the mode transition equivalent ratio is approximately 0.20.

Explore artificial neural networks for solving complex hydrocarbon chemistry in turbulent reactive flows

Global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels is a common concern of the world today.It is of practical importance to conduct in-depth fundamental research and optimal design for modern engine combustors through However,complex hydrocarbon chemistry,an indispensable component for predictive modeling,is computahigh-fidelity computational fluid dynamics(CFD),so as to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction.tionally demanding,Its application in simulation-based design optimization,although desirable,is quite limited.To address this challenge,we propose a methodology for representing complex chemistry with artificial neural networks(ANNs),which are trained with a comprehensive sample dataset generated by the Latin hypercube sampling(LHS)method.With a given chemical kinetic mechanism,the thermochemical sample data is able to cover the whole accessible pressure/temperature/species space in various turbulent flames.The ANN-based model consists of two different layers:the self-organizing map(SOM)and the back-propagation neural network(BPNN).The methodology is demonstrated to represent a 30-species methane chemical mechanism.The obtained ANN model is applied to simulate both a non-premixed turbulent flame(DLR_A)and a partially premixed turbulent flame(Flame D)to validate its applicability for different flames.Results show that the ANN-based chemical kinetics can reduce the computational cost by about two orders of magnitude without loss of accuracy,The proposed methodology can successfully construct an ANN-based chemical mechanism with significant ffciency gain and a broad scope of applicability,and thus holds a great potential for complex hydrocarbon fuels.

A dual timescale model for micro-mixing and its application in LES-TPDF simulations of turbulent nonpremixed flames

The numerical simulation of modern aero-engine combustion chamber needs accurate description of the interaction between turbulence and chemical reaction mechanism. The Large Eddy Simulation(LES) method with the Transported Probability Density Function(TPDF) turbulence combustion model is promising in engineering applications. In flame region, the impact of chemical reaction should be considered in TPDF molecular mixing model. Based on pioneer research, three new TPDF turbulence-chemistry dual time scale molecular mixing models were proposed tentatively by adding the chemistry time scale in molecular mixing model for nonpremixed flame. The Aero-Engine Combustor Simulation Code(AECSC) which is based on LES-TPDF method was combined with the three new models. Then the Sandia laboratory's methane-air jet flames: Flame D and Flame E were simulated. Transient simulation results show that all the three new models can predict the instantaneous combustion flow pattern of the jet flames. Furthermore,the average scalar statistical results were compared with the experimental data. The simulation result of the new TPDF arithmetic mean modification model is the closest to the experimental data:the average error in Flame D is 7.6% and 6.6% in Flame E. The extinction and re-ignition phenomena of the jet flames especially Flame E were captured. The turbulence time scale and the chemistry time scale are in different order in the whole flow field. The dual time scale TPDF combustion model has ability to deal with both the turbulence effect and the chemistry reaction effect, as well as their interaction more accurately for nonpremixed flames.