Direct and indirect thermal expansion effects in turbulent premixed flames

2011 ◽  
Vol 689 ◽  
pp. 149-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Robin ◽  
Arnaud Mura ◽  
Michel Champion

AbstractThe thermal expansion induced by the exothermic chemical reactions taking place in a turbulent reactive flow affects the velocity field so strongly that the large-scale velocity fluctuations as well as the small-scale velocity gradients can be governed by chemistry rather than by turbulence. Moreover, thermal expansion is well known to be responsible for counter-gradient turbulent diffusion and flame-generated turbulence phenomena. In the present study, by making use of an original splitting procedure applied to the velocity field, we establish the occurrence of two distinct thermal expansion effects in the flamelet regime of turbulent premixed combustion. The first is referred to as the direct thermal expansion effect. It is associated with a local flamelet crossing contribution as previously considered in early analyses of turbulent transport in premixed flames. The second, denoted herein as the indirect thermal expansion effect, is an outcome of the turbulent wrinkling processes that increases the flame surface area. Based on a splitting procedure applied to the velocity field, the respective influences of the two effects are identified and analysed. Furthermore, the theoretical analysis shows that the thermal expansion induced through the local flames can be treated separately in the usual continuity and momentum equations. This description of the turbulent reactive velocity field, leads also to relate all of the usual turbulent quantities to the reactive scalar field. Finally, algebraic closures for the turbulent transport terms of mass and momentum are proposed and successfully validated through comparison with direct numerical simulation data.

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 201-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Eidelman ◽  
T. Elperin ◽  
A. Kapusta ◽  
N. Kleeorin ◽  
A. Krein ◽  
...  

Abstract. An oscillating grids turbulence generator was constructed for studies of two new effects associated with turbulent transport of particles, turbulent thermal diffusion and clustering instability. These effects result in formation of large-scale and small-scale inhomogeneities in the spatial distribution of particles. The advantage of this experimental set-up is the feasibility to study turbulent transport in mixtures with controllable composition and unlimited observation time. For flow measurements we used Particle Image Velocimetry with the adaptive multi-pass algorithm to determine a turbulent velocity field and its statistical characteristics. Instantaneous velocity vector maps, flow streamlines and probability density function of velocity field demonstrate properties of turbulence generated in the device.


Author(s):  
C. Y. Lee ◽  
R. S. Cant

Combustion instabilities in propulsion systems are often manifested through high amplitude pressure oscillations that can severely compromise performance and even lead to mechanical failure. Such instability arises from the development of large-scale coherent structures and their breakdown into fine scale turbulence that can alter the flame structure and affect turbulent mixing. When in phase with the pressure, the modulated heat release rate fluctuations can drive the system to the point where it reaches a limit cycle. Using high fidelity CFD, the present investigation describes the occurrence of combustion-driven instability in bluff-body stabilized turbulent premixed flames, in which there is dynamic coupling between the preferred hydrodynamic modes and the acoustics of the duct. A URANS approach is adopted, using a second moment closure to solve for the anisotropic turbulent Reynolds stresses. This is combined with the Bray-Moss-Libby (BML) combustion model with a modified reaction rate closure that aims to capture the changes in the flame surface density due to external flow perturbations. Two different geometries are used for the investigation: the first is a laboratory-scale planar bluff-body flameholder [1]; and the second is the well-known Volvo afterburner experiment [2]. Four different conditions are presented to illustrate the various self-excited instabilities that can appear depending on the coupling mechanisms between the different fluid-mechanical and acoustic phenomena. For the planar geometry, a self-sustained hydrodynamic instability induced by large-scale coherent structures occurs under fuel-lean conditions. When the equivalence ratio is increased, the flame becomes strongly wrinkled due to velocity perturbations arising from the Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) instability of the shear layer. The combustion heat release becomes modulated such that its phase relationship with the pressure fluctuations is sufficient to trigger thermoacoustic instability. For the Volvo experiment, symmetric shedding takes place and an acoustic mode of the duct is excited when the mixture strength is lean. At higher equivalence ratio, the flame is perturbed by the hydrodynamic instabilities of the most amplified mode. Small scale structures can be seen in the vicinity of the flameholder, and larger fluctuations in the flame occur further downstream. No appreciable feedback from the acoustic modes is present to sustain combustion instabilities.


A review is presented of turbulent transport phenomena in flames. Both large-scale turbulent transport and small-scale mixing processes are considered and various mechanisms of interaction between combustion and turbulent flow are identified. Flame-surface density descriptions of turbulent combustion at high Damköhler numbers are discussed in detail and some topics are identified which require further attention. Emphasis is placed on problems of premixed turbulent combustion.


Computation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shokri Amzin ◽  
Mariusz Domagała

In turbulent premixed flames, for the mixing at a molecular level of reactants and products on the flame surface, it is crucial to sustain the combustion. This mixing phenomenon is featured by the scalar dissipation rate, which may be broadly defined as the rate of micro-mixing at small scales. This term, which appears in many turbulent combustion methods, includes the Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) and the Probability Density Function (PDF), requires an accurate model. In this study, a mathematical closure for the conditional mean scalar dissipation rate, <Nc|ζ>, in Reynolds, Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) context is proposed and tested against two different Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) databases having different thermochemical and turbulence conditions. These databases consist of lean turbulent premixed V-flames of the CH4-air mixture and stoichiometric turbulent premixed flames of H2-air. The mathematical model has successfully predicted the peak and the typical profile of <Nc|ζ> with the sample space ζ and its prediction was consistent with an earlier study.


2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnaud Mura ◽  
Vincent Robin ◽  
Michel Champion ◽  
Tatsuya Hasegawa

A numerical study on the transition from laminar to turbulent of two-dimensional fuel jet flames developed in a co-flowing air stream was made by adopting the flame surface model of infinite chemical reaction rate and unit Lewis number. The time dependent compressible Navier–Stokes equation was solved numerically with the equation for coupling function by using a finite difference method. The temperature-dependence of viscosity and diffusion coefficient were taken into account so as to study effects of increases of these coefficients on the transition. The numerical calculation was done for the case when methane is injected into a co-flowing air stream with variable injection Reynolds number up to 2500. When the Reynolds number was smaller than 1000 the flame, as well as the flow, remained laminar in the calculated domain. As the Reynolds number was increased above this value, a transition point appeared along the flame, downstream of which the flame and flow began to fluctuate. Two kinds of fluctuations were observed, a small scale fluctuation near the jet axis and a large scale fluctuation outside the flame surface, both of the same origin, due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. The radial distributions of density and transport coefficients were found to play dominant roles in this instability, and hence in the transition mechanism. The decreased density in the flame accelerated the instability, while the increase in viscosity had a stabilizing effect. However, the most important effect was the increase in diffusion coefficient. The increase shifted the flame surface, where the large density decrease occurs, outside the shear layer of the jet and produced a thick viscous layer surrounding the jet which effectively suppressed the instability.


1949 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 451 ◽  
Author(s):  
AA Townsend

Extending previous work on turbulent diffusion in the wake of a circular-cylinder, a series of measurements have been made of the turbulent transport of mean stream momentum, turbulent energy, and heat in the wake of a cylinder of 0.169 cm. diameter, placed in an air-stream of velocity 1280 cm. sec.-1. It has been possible to extend the measurements to 960 diameters down-stream from the cylinder, and it 1s found that, at distances in excess of 600 diameters, the requirements of dynamical similarity are very nearly satisfied. To account for the observed rates of transport of turbulent energy and heat, it is necessary that only part of this transport be due to bulk convection by the slow large-scale motion of the jets of turbulent fluid emitted by the central, fully turbulent core of the wake, which had been supposed previously to perform most of the transport. The remainder of the transport is carried out by the small-scale diffusive motion of the turbulent eddies within the jets, and may be described by assigning diffusion coefficients to the turbulent fluid. It is found that the diffusion coefficients for momentum and heat are approximately equal, but that for turbulent energy is considerably smaller. On the basis of these hypotheses, it is possible to calculate $he form of the mean velocity distribution in good agreement with experiment, and to give a qualitative explanation of the apparently more rapid diffusion of heat.


2018 ◽  
Vol 856 ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Salesky ◽  
W. Anderson

A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of so-called large- and very-large-scale motions (LSM, VLSM) that occur in the logarithmic region of inertia-dominated wall-bounded turbulent flows. These regions exhibit significant streamwise coherence, and have been shown to modulate the amplitude and frequency of small-scale inner-layer fluctuations in smooth-wall turbulent boundary layers. In contrast, the extent to which analogous modulation occurs in inertia-dominated flows subjected to convective thermal stratification (low Richardson number) and Coriolis forcing (low Rossby number), has not been considered. And yet, these parameter values encompass a wide range of important environmental flows. In this article, we present evidence of amplitude modulation (AM) phenomena in the unstably stratified (i.e. convective) atmospheric boundary layer, and link changes in AM to changes in the topology of coherent structures with increasing instability. We perform a suite of large eddy simulations spanning weakly ($-z_{i}/L=3.1$) to highly convective ($-z_{i}/L=1082$) conditions (where$-z_{i}/L$is the bulk stability parameter formed from the boundary-layer depth$z_{i}$and the Obukhov length $L$) to investigate how AM is affected by buoyancy. Results demonstrate that as unstable stratification increases, the inclination angle of surface layer structures (as determined from the two-point correlation of streamwise velocity) increases from$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\approx 15^{\circ }$for weakly convective conditions to nearly vertical for highly convective conditions. As$-z_{i}/L$increases, LSMs in the streamwise velocity field transition from long, linear updrafts (or horizontal convective rolls) to open cellular patterns, analogous to turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection. These changes in the instantaneous velocity field are accompanied by a shift in the outer peak in the streamwise and vertical velocity spectra to smaller dimensionless wavelengths until the energy is concentrated at a single peak. The decoupling procedure proposed by Mathiset al.(J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009a, pp. 311–337) is used to investigate the extent to which amplitude modulation of small-scale turbulence occurs due to large-scale streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations. As the spatial attributes of flow structures change from streamwise to vertically dominated, modulation by the large-scale streamwise velocity decreases monotonically. However, the modulating influence of the large-scale vertical velocity remains significant across the stability range considered. We report, finally, that amplitude modulation correlations are insensitive to the computational mesh resolution for flows forced by shear, buoyancy and Coriolis accelerations.


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