No Arabic abstract
We study the effect of thermal noise on the propagation speed of a planar flame. We show that this out of equilibrium greatly amplifies the effect of thermal noise to yield macroscopic reductions in the flame speed over what is predicted by the noise-free model. Computations show that noise slows the flame significantly. The flame is modeled using Navier Stokes equations with appropriate diffusive transport terms and chemical kinetic mechanism of hydrogen/oxygen. Thermal noise is modeled within the continuum framework using a system of stochastic partial differential equations, with transport noise from fluctuating hydrodynamics and reaction noise from a poisson model. We use a full chemical kinetics model in order to get quantitatively meaningful results. We compute steady and dynamic flames using an operator split finite volume scheme. New characteristic boundary conditions avoid non-physical boundary layers at computational boundaries. New limiters prevent stochastic terms from introducing non-physical negative concentrations. This represents the first computation of a model with thermal noise is a system with this degree of physical detail.
Extinction strain rate (ESR) and laminar flame speed (LFS) are fundamental properties of a fuel/air mixture that are often utilized as scaling parameters in turbulent combustion. While LFS at atmospheric and elevated pressures are extensively investigated, experimental measurements of ESR with counterflow premixed flames are very limited for flame instability often occurs near extinction, especially at high pressures. Due to the scarcity of ESR measurements, most combustion kinetic models are mainly validated and optimized against LFS. However, it is questionable whether the controlling reactions are the same for ESR and LFS such that those models are also valid for predicting ESR. This work quantifies the kinetic similarities between ESR and LFS by analyzing their kinetic sensitivity directions. The direction is represented by a unit vector composed of the normalized sensitivity of ESR or LFS to the rate constant for each elemental reaction. Consequently, the similarity between the two directions is measured by the inner product of the corresponding unit vectors. The sensitivity directions of ESR and LFS are found parallel for various fuels, equivalence ratios, and pressures. Furthermore, sensitivity directions at various strain rates are also similar for the maximum temperature, local temperature at various locations in the flame coordinate, and ESR in counterflow premixed flames. These findings suggest that LFS and ESR are similarly effective as the target for constraining and optimizing rate constants in kinetic models. In addition, the independence of the sensitivity directions on the strain rate also enables us to perform uncertainty quantification for turbulent flames with a wide range of strain rates based on the kinetic sensitivity of ESR and LFS.
This paper presents a flame-height correlation for laminar to transition-to-turbulent regime diffusion flames. Flame-height measurements are obtained by means of numerical and experimental studies in which three high definition cameras were employed to take frontal, lateral and 45{deg} angled images simultaneously. The images were analysed using an image-processing algorithm to determine the flame-height through indirect measurement. To locate an overall chemical-flame-length, numerical simulations were conducted with the unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes technique. The eddy-dissipation model was also implemented to calculate chemical reaction rate. The experiments show that this proposed correlation has an adjustment variation of luminous flame-height for the laminar regime of 16.9%, which indicates that, without the use of the intermittent buoyant flame-height correlation, it globally best represents the flame-height in this regime. For the laminar and transition-to-turbulence regime the adjustment variations are 5.54% compared to the most accepted flame-height correlations, thus providing an acceptably good fitting. The numerical results show that the proposed range for the chemical-flame-length is located between the luminous and flickering flame zone compared to the experimental flame images. These results agree with the chemical length zone reported in the literature. Therefore, the correlation can be used for laminar and transition-to-turbulent combustion regimes.
Numerical work on shockwave/boundary-layer interactions (SBLIs) to date has largely focused on span-periodic quasi-2D configurations that neglect the influence lateral confinement has on the core flow. The present study is concerned with the effect of flow confinement on Mach 2 laminar SBLI in rectangular ducts. An oblique shock generated by a 2 degree wedge forms a conical swept SBLI with sidewall boundary layers before reflecting from the bottom wall of the domain. Multiple large regions of flow-reversal are observed on the sidewalls, bottom wall and at the corner intersection. The main interaction is found to be strongly three-dimensional and highly dependent on the geometry of the duct. Comparison to quasi-2D span-periodic simulations showed sidewalls strengthen the interaction by 31% for the baseline configuration with an aspect ratio of one. The length of the shock generator and subsequent trailing edge expansion fan position was shown to be a critical parameter in determining the central separation length. By shortening the length of the shock generator, control of the interaction and suppression of the central interaction is demonstrated. Parametric studies of shock strength and duct aspect ratio were performed to find limiting behaviours. For the largest aspect ratio of four, three-dimensionality was visible across 30% of the span width away from the wall. Topological features of the three-dimensional separation are identified and shown to be consistent with `owl-like separations of the first kind. The reflection of the initial conical swept SBLIs is found to be the most significant factor determining the flow structures downstream of the main interaction.
We numerically study the propagation of reacting fronts in a shallow and horizontal layer of fluid with solutal feedback and in the presence of a thermally driven flow field of counter-rotating convection rolls. We solve the Boussinesq equations along with a reaction-convection-diffusion equation for the concentration field where the products of the nonlinear autocatalytic reaction are less dense than the reactants. For small values of the solutal Rayleigh number the characteristic fluid velocity scales linearly, and the front velocity and mixing length scale quadratically, with increasing solutal Rayleigh number. For small solutal Rayleigh numbers the front geometry is described by a curve that is nearly antisymmetric about the horizontal midplane. For large values of the solutal Rayleigh number the characteristic fluid velocity, the front velocity, and the mixing length exhibit square-root scaling and the front shape collapses onto an asymmetric self-similar curve. In the presence of counter-rotating convection rolls, the mixing length decreases while the front velocity increases. The complexity of the front geometry increases when both the solutal and convective contributions are significant and the dynamics can exhibit chemical oscillations in time for certain parameter values. Lastly, we discuss the spatiotemporal features of the complex fronts that form over a range of solutal and thermal driving.
The mixing process of multiple jets of liquefied petroleum gas and air in a diffusion flame is numerically analysed. The case study considers a four-port array burner where the fuel is injected by four peripheral nozzles and mixed with the surrounding air. Simulations are conducted with the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes technique, and the turbulence effect is modelled with the realizable k-e model. In addition, the eddy dissipation model is implemented to calculate the effect of the turbulent chemical reaction rate. Results show that the essential mixture mechanism occurs within a flame cone derived from the fuel jets interaction. However, the mixing process is driven by jets drag allowing an air/fuel smooth mixture to reach the flammability limits at two zones: one at a lower location or close to the burner surface and a second before the flame front development. The entire mixing mechanism culminates with the development of the flame necking cone. Any air concentration that falls into the cone radius will be entrained, contributing to the overall flame structure. Since the cone radius reach is limited only by radial distance of the jet array and the nozzles distance, the flame heights, consequently, depend solely on fuel mass flow.