LES of Sandia/TUD Flame D with Eulerian

Filtered PDF and Finite-Rate Chemistry

F. Bisetti1, J.-Y. Chen1, A. M. Kempf 2, J. Janicka3
1: UC Berkeley, USA; 2: Imperial College London, UK; 3: Technical University Darmstadt, Germany

1. Introduction 2. Open questions

burner
Modeling of extinction in a turbulent flame is a great challenge due to The practice of coupling LES and FPDF is developing into a detail
the nonlinear interaction between chemistry and turbulence mature modeling approach for nonlinear chemistry-turbulence, but
D
several questions remain open:
Probability Density Function (PDF) methods are the method of choice
to address extinction modeling, and nonlinear chemistry-turbulence  Are the existing micro-mixing models (IEM, MC, and EMST)
interactions in general adequate?
Given the great potential of Large Eddy Simulation, current research  Compared with previous RANS-based framework, do mixing 60
focuses on the coupling of LES and (filtered) PDF methods models play a less critical role in LES/FPDF calculations?
Benchmarking is still largely based on laboratory configurations  Given the elusive nature of extinction itself, are we comparing
adequately experimental and numerical data?
 Finally, can we “predict extinction” to a good enough extent?
40

3. Present focus 4. Problem formulation

Compare the results obtained employing the three main mixing Sandia/TUD Flame D: piloted CH4/air jet flame (Re = 22,400)
models (MC, IEM and EMST)
LES with presumed beta-PDF and steady flamelet approach

computational domain
20
Assess the behavior of a newly developed higher order Eulerian
method to solve for the FPDF transport equation Flow field is left uncoupled from the PDF solution

Evaluate the capability of the available methodology to capture Computational domain extends 20 diameters downstream
extinction in simple laboratory configurations The mesh is rather coarse with about 300,000 nodes
Develop a solid framework to tackle more challenging test cases

5. Results 1800

1600
exp
IEM
600
exp
IEM
MC 500 MC
Temperature, T, [K]

Temperature, T, [K]
EMST EMST
0.08 1400
experimental
(a) experimental IEM experimental
(a) experimental IEM
400
2000
2000 2000 1200
0.06
Temperature, T, [K]

Temperature, T, [K]

1500
1500 1500 1000 300
0.04
800
1000
1000 1000 200
0.02 600
500
500 500
100
0 400
0.08
MC EMST MC EMST
2000 200 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
0.06 r/D, [-] r/D, [-]
1500
0.04
Fig. 2 – Radial plots of temperature mean (left) and RMS (right) at x/D = 15.
1000
0.02
500
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 10 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 10 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Mixture Fraction, F, [-] Mixture Fraction, F, [-] Mixture Fraction, F, [-] Mixture Fraction, F, [-] last burning flame
Scatter plots match reasonably the
2000
burning experimental results.
Fig. 1 - Scatter plots for temperature (left) and CO mass fraction (right) at x/D = 15. above
1500 All mixing models predict a burning
solution, and differences are limited
0.06 1000 Radial profiles of mean and deviation of
Temperature Y CO
2000 not burning temperature show acceptable
500 below predictions
0.04
1500 EMST mixing model seem to produce
Mixture Fraction, F, [-] the best results
1000 0.02
Fig. 4a – Strategy to quantify the extinction
500 based on a last burning flamelet.
0
400 0.02
Temperature 1 0.25
RMS Y CO RMS exp
IEM stoichiometric exp
300 0.015 MC
CPDF of extinction, [-]

EMST IEM
0.8 0.2 MC
200 0.01 EMST
CPDF, [-]

0.6 0.15
100 0.005
0.34 < F < 0.36
0 0 0.4
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0.1
Mixture Fraction, F, [-] Mixture Fraction, F, [-]

Fig. 3 – Conditional mean (above) and RMS (below) for 0.2 0.05
temperature (left) and CO mass fraction (right) at x/D = 15.

0 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 500 1000 1500 2000
Mixture Fraction, F, [-]
6. Conclusions Temperature, T, [K]

The results obtained are comparable to previously published Fig. 4b – Conditional probability of extinction. Fig. 5 – Conditional probability of temperature
shows very little difference among mixing
results
models.
Extinction is reasonably well predicted by EMST mixing
model, while other models over predict the occurrence of 7. Future work
extinction events
More demanding tests are needed. Flames E and F will require full coupling between LES
All mixing models display very similar behavior
and FPDF solution, and will most likely exacerbate the differences across mixing models
Such similarity is in contrast to previous experience with
The mesh used in these calculations is arguably coarse. A mesh refinement study is
RANS. We postulate that LES provides a description of the
certainly computationally demanding, but needed to gain full confidence in the conclusions.
flow field which is more suitable to FPDF formulation.
Finally, the role played by the choice of chemical mechanism in the prediction of extinction
needs to be carefully assessed.