Study of Ignition Processes of a Lean Burn Engine using Large-Eddy Simulation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Benoit ◽  
P. Luszcz ◽  
Y. Drouvin ◽  
T. Kayashima ◽  
P. Adomeit ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
S. Puggelli ◽  
D. Bertini ◽  
L. Mazzei ◽  
A. Andreini

During the last years aero-engines are progressively evolving toward design concepts that permit improvements in terms of engine safety, fuel economy and pollutant emissions. With the aim of satisfying the strict NOx reduction targets imposed by ICAO-CAEP, lean burn technology is one of the most promising solutions even if it must face safety concerns and technical issues. Hence a depth insight on lean burn combustion is required and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be a useful tool for this purpose. In this work a comparison in Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) framework of two widely employed combustion approaches like the Artificially Thickened Flame (ATF) and the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) is performed using ANSYS® Fluent v16.2. Two literature test cases with increasing complexity in terms of geometry, flow field and operating conditions are considered. Firstly, capabilities of FGM are evaluated on a single swirler burner operating at ambient pressure with a standard pressure atomizer for spray injection. Then a second test case, operated at 4 bar, is simulated. Here kerosene fuel is burned after an injection through a prefilming airblast atomizer within a co-rotating double swirler. Obtained comparisons with experimental results show the different capabilities of ATF and FGM in modelling the partially-premixed behaviour of the flame and provides an overview of the main strengths and limitations of the modelling strategies under investigation.


Author(s):  
Martin Thomas ◽  
Jerome Dombard ◽  
Florent Duchaine ◽  
Laurent Gicquel ◽  
Charlie Koupper

Abstract Development goals for next generation aircraft engines are mainly determined by the need to reduce fuel consumption and environmental impact. To reduce NOx emissions lean combustion technologies will be applied in future development projects. The more compact design and the absence of dilution holes in this type of engines shortens residence times in the combustion chamber and reduces mixing which results in higher levels of swirl, turbulence and temperature distortions at the exit of the combustion chamber. For these engines interactions between components are more important, so that the traditional engine design approach of component-wise optimization will have to be adapted. To study new lean burn architectures the European FACTOR project investigates the transport of hot streaks produced by a non-reactive combustor simulator through a single stage high-pressure turbine. In this work high-fidelity Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of combustor and complete high-pressure turbine are discussed and validated against experimental data. Measurement data is available on P40 (exit of the combustion chamber), P41 (exit of the stator) and P42 (exit of the rotor) and generally shows a good agreement to LES data.


Author(s):  
Andrea Giusti ◽  
Epaminondas Mastorakos ◽  
Christoph Hassa ◽  
Johannes Heinze ◽  
Eggert Magens ◽  
...  

In this work, a single sector lean burn model combustor operating in pilot only mode has been investigated using both experiments and computations with the main objective of analyzing the flame structure and soot formation at conditions relevant to aero-engine applications. Numerical simulations were performed using the large eddy simulation (LES) approach and the conditional moment closure (CMC) combustion model with detailed chemistry and a two-equation model for soot. The CMC model is based on the time-resolved solution of the local flame structure and allows to directly take into account the phenomena associated to molecular mixing and turbulent transport, which are of great importance for the prediction of emissions. The rig investigated in this work, called big optical single sector rig, allows to test real scale lean burn injectors. Experiments, performed at elevated pressure and temperature, corresponding to engine conditions at part load, include planar laser-induced fluorescence of OH (OH-PLIF) and phase Doppler anemometry (PDA) and have been complemented with new laser-induced incandescence (LII) measurements for soot location. The wide range of measurements available allows a comprehensive analysis of the primary combustion region and can be exploited to further assess and validate the LES/CMC approach to capture the flame behavior at engine conditions. It is shown that the LES/CMC approach is able to predict the main characteristics of the flame with a good agreement with the experiment in terms of flame shape, spray characteristics and soot location. Finite-rate chemistry effects appear to be very important in the region close to the injection location leading to the lift-off of the flame. Low levels of soot are observed immediately downstream of the injector exit, where a high amount of vaporized fuel is still present. Further downstream, the fuel vapor disappears quite quickly and an extended region characterized by the presence of pyrolysis products and soot precursors is observed. The strong production of soot precursors together with high soot surface growth rates lead to high values of soot volume fraction in locations consistent with the experiment. Soot oxidation is also very important in the downstream region resulting in a decrease of the soot level at the combustor exit. The results show a very promising capability of the LES/CMC approach to capture the main characteristics of the flame, soot formation, and location at engine relevant conditions. More advanced soot models will be considered in future work in order to improve the quantitative prediction of the soot level.


Author(s):  
Yingjie Qiao ◽  
Ronghai Mao ◽  
Yuzhen Lin

The ignition performance is a crucial issue for combustor design, especially when lean burn technologies are employed to reduce the NOx emission. Ignition is the initiation of a flame kernel followed by flame propagation and global establishment. The initiation of flame kernel is beyond the scope of this paper because it involves plasma formation process. The present investigation is mainly focused on flame front propagation which is modeled by solving a transport equation of reaction progress variable. Large eddy simulation (LES) with flamelet model has been employed to study the effect of various spark location under engine start condition. The numerical approach is validated by ignition experiments with turbulent bluff-body burner conducted by Ahmed and Mastorakos in Cambridge University. Mean and transient characteristics of velocity, mixture fraction and flame structures are compared with experimental data, to assess the accuracy of simulation in terms of flow structure, turbulent mixing and combustion performances. The validated LES model is then applied to study a series of physical locations of the spark plug in a single dome combustor. Successful and unsuccessful ignition sequences, time evolution of velocity and fuel/air ratio (FAR) of selected spots are recorded. Comparing the unsuccessful ignition with the successful ones, whether flame kernel enters into the CRZ and ignites the flammable mixture is a critical process which determines successful ignition. The evolution of flame kernel is correlated to flow field and fuel/air distribution to further analyze their effects on the ignition process. Since the process is highly transient, successful ignition is not only determined by parameters of spark location, but also influenced by the parameters throughout the flow path during flame propagation.


Author(s):  
S. Puggelli ◽  
D. Bertini ◽  
L. Mazzei ◽  
A. Andreini

Over the last years, aero-engines are progressively evolving toward design concepts that permit improvements in terms of engine safety, fuel economy, and pollutant emissions. With the aim of satisfying the strict NOx reduction targets imposed by ICAO-CAEP, lean burn technology is one of the most promising solutions even if it must face safety concerns and technical issues. Hence, a depth insight on lean burn combustion is required, and computational fluid dynamics can be a useful tool for this purpose. In this work, a comparison in large eddy simulation (LES) framework of two widely employed combustion approaches like the artificially thickened flame (ATF) and the flamelet generated manifold (FGM) is performed using ANSYS fluent v16.2. Two literature test cases with increasing complexity in terms of geometry, flow field, and operating conditions are considered. First, capabilities of FGM are evaluated on a single swirler burner operating at ambient pressure with a standard pressure atomizer for spray injection. Then, a second test case, operated at 4 bar, is simulated. Here, kerosene fuel is burned after an injection through a prefilming airblast atomizer within a corotating double swirler. Obtained comparisons with experimental results show different capabilities of ATF and FGM in modeling the partially premixed behavior of the flame and provide an overview of the main strengths and limitations of the modeling strategies under investigation.


Author(s):  
Martin Thomas ◽  
Antoine Dauptain ◽  
Florent Duchaine ◽  
Laurent Gicquel ◽  
Charlie Koupper ◽  
...  

With the goal of increasing the thermodynamic efficiency of aircraft engines, the temperature in the combustion chamber has risen to the point where the gas temperature is above the melting point of materials used in the chamber and cooling systems are mandatory. Today, most of the existing lean burn combustors rely on multiperforated liners to keep hot gases away from the walls. However, resolving all holes of the combustor in the CFD design phase remains beyond currently available computational resources, so the effusion cooling system is often modeled by homogeneously injecting air on the whole surface of the liner, especially in the context of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) based CFD. This paper investigates a novel approach to simulate the effect of jets emitted from discrete holes on the flow inside a combustion chamber. In this new modeling approach, jet diameters are treated to be resolvable by the grid while conserving the correct mass and momentum flow rate. LES are performed on the combustion simulator of the engine representative FACTOR test rig at two different operating points and compared to measurement data as well as previous simulations obtained using a homogeneous air injection modeling on liners. The new approach shows globally similar results as the well validated homogeneous injection model and is applicable on realistic industrial geometries at a negligible level of additional cost (+0.3%).


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