Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367

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Combustion and Flame

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/combustflame

Characterization of flameless combustion in a model gas turbine

combustor using a novel post-processing tool
Ehsan Fooladgar a,b,∗, Pál Tóth b,c, Christophe Duwig a
a
KTH Mechanics, Linné FLOW Centre, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
b
RISE Energy Technology Center AB, Piteå, Sweden
c
Institute of Physical Metallurgy, Metal Forming and Nanotechnology H-3515 Miskolc-Egyetemvaros, C/1 108 Hungary

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Flameless combustion is a very promising technology for the future gas turbines. It is clean and
Received 24 September 2018 stable—without large oscillations, noise and flashback. To facilitate the adoption of this technology
Revised 17 December 2018
in gas turbines, advanced design tools are needed. In this paper, a recently developed unsuper-
Accepted 13 March 2019
vised post-processing tool is used to analyze the large amount of high-dimensional data produced
Available online 29 March 2019
in a series of Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of a model gas turbine operating in flameless mode.
Keywords: Simulations are performed using Finite Rate Chemistry (FRC) combustion modeling and a detailed
Flameless combustion description of chemistry. The automatic post-processing reveals important features of the combus-
Automatic post-processing tion process that are not easily recognizable by other methods, making it a complementary step
Implicit Large Eddy Simulation for the already established FRC–LES approach, and a potential design tool for advanced combustion
Finite Rate Chemistry systems.
t-SNE
© 2019 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction dilution of reactants, the reaction zone is distributed within a

To reduce harmful emissions, the current trend is to design
industrial combustion devices to operate in lean premixed (LPM)
conditions [1]. Owing to complete fuel burnout and low flame
temperature, operating under fuel lean conditions leads to higher
efficiency and significant reduction of NOx, hydrocarbon and CO
emissions [2]. Unfortunately, achieving these improvements un-
der practical operation condition of combustion systems encoun-
ters serious difficulties such as instability, noise, flashback, lean
blowout and sensitivity to mixing [3–5]. Moreover, highly pre-
heated air (a common method for increasing energy efficiency of
a combustion device) cannot be incorporated in a typical LPM
system since it gives rise to thermal NOx formation and risk of
auto-ignition [6].
An attractive alternative for low-emission combustion systems
is flameless combustion, also termed Flox, volume, or mild com-
bustion in the literature [7–9]. To achieve flameless mode, highly
diluted (by inert gases such as N2 , CO2 , or H2 O) and pre-
heated (preferably above the self-ignition temperature) reactants
are rapidly mixed into the combustion chamber. Due to the high
∗
Corresponding author at: RISE Energy Technology Center AB, Piteå, Sweden.
E-mail addresses: ehsan.fooladgar@ri.se (E. Fooladgar), pal.toth@ri.se (P. Tóth),
duwig@mech.kth.se (C. Duwig).
very large volume as opposed to thin reaction zones in traditional
flames. Eliminating flame fronts where temperature peaks occur,
results in considerable reduction in NOx emissions and stable lean
combustion without large oscillations, noise and flashback. Flame-
less combustion has been widely studied in industrial burners,
e.g., [10,11], however, its application to practical gas turbine com-
bustors is limited, e.g., [7,12]. Due to novelty of the technology,
advanced design tools are needed in order to facilitate the initial
adaptation phase.
In this paper, a numerical approach incorporating Large Eddy
Simulation (LES) with Finite Rate Chemistry (FRC) combustion
modeling and a detailed chemical mechanism is used to study a
model gas turbine operating in flameless mode, along with a re-
cently developed post-processing method. The main focus of the
paper is on post-processing the results of FRC–LES using an unsu-
pervised automatic tool, which we believe is a missing link for the
already established FRC–LES approach to become a design tool for
combustion technology.
The remainder of this paper is outlined as follows. Section 2 de-
scribes the numerical setup and procedure including numeri-
cal domains, boundary conditions, equations and closures. In
Section 3, first the results of the non-reacting and react-
ing simulations are validated and compared. Then, two new

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2019.03.015
0010-2180/© 2019 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367 357

Fig. 1. (a): Drawing of the burner and snapshot of the heat release surfaces colored by temperature. (b): Numerical domain of combustor and mixer.

tools are introduced and utilized to characterize flameless was created at the first cell of all wall boundaries. Details of the
combustion. grids and inlet boundary conditions of the cases simulated in this
study are listed in Table 1.
2. Numerical setup and procedure
2.2. Equations and closures
2.1. Numerical domains and boundary conditions
Reacting flows are governed by the balance equations of mass,
The numerical setup of this study was based on the model gas momentum, species, and energy. The basic idea of LES is resolv-
turbine studied by Duwig et al. [12]. The model combustor con- ing large-scale turbulent motions in a flow field and modeling the
sisted of a plenum chamber, the flameless burner and a quartz effect of the small ones. The resolved contribution of a variable f¯
combustion chamber, shown in Fig. 1(a), with a diameter D of is obtained by applying the spatial LES filter to the instantaneous
0.1 m and length of 0.3 m. The propane/air mixture was intro- variable f. Filtering the instantaneous governing equations for re-
duced to the chamber through 12 equally spaced injectors with acting flows and introducing the Favre filtered variable, f˜ = f ρ /ρ̄
diameters d of 6 mm. The air (entering into the burner from the where over-bars denote spatial filtering, leads to the equation of
upstream plenum) and the fuel (coming from 12 × 4 fuel injec- mass,
tion holes) were premixed within the 12 straight coaxial tube noz- ∂ ρ̄ ∂
+ (ρ̄ u˜i ) = 0, (1)
zles over a distance of 0.025 m before the combustion chamber. ∂ t ∂ xi
For the numerical setup, one of the mixing tubes was simulated
momentum,
at an isothermal condition in order to obtain the profiles of veloc-
ity, propane mass fraction, temperature and their variations with ∂ ∂   ∂ p̄ ∂  
(ρ̄ u˜i ) + ρ̄ u˜i u˜ j + = τ̄ − ρ̄ (u ˜i u˜j ) ,
iu j − u (2)
time for the 12 chamber inlets, see 1(b). The stored data was then ∂t ∂ xi ∂ x j ∂ xi i j
used to impose the inlet boundary conditions for the combustor. A species,
no-slip boundary condition was used for velocity at the wall with  
zero gradients for scalars. For reacting cases, the temperature of ∂  ˜ ∂   ∂ ∂ Y˜
ρ̄Yk + ρ̄ u˜iY˜k = ρ̄ D̄k k − ρ̄ (uY − ˜
u Y˜ )
the combustor wall is set to 10 0 0 K and a zero gradient boundary ∂t ∂ xi ∂ xi ∂ xi i k i k

condition is used for non-reacting ones.

The grid of the combustor domain (black region in Fig. 1(b))
+ w˙ k ; k = 1, N, (3)
consisted of approximately 5 (2 for the coarse grid) million hexa- and enthalpy
hedral cells body fitted with different refinement levels for react-  
∂ ˜ ∂  ˜ ∂ ∂ T˜
ing, non-reacting and far downstream regions in order to reduce ρ̄ hs + ρ̄ u˜i hs = λ̄ − ρ̄ (u
i hs − u
˜s)
˜i h
the computational cost. The resolution inside the reacting region ∂t ∂ xi ∂ xi ∂ xi
was 0.35 mm per cell, yielding 16 cells over the diameter of each
N
jet. A boundary layer featuring 5 layers with a growth rate of 1.2 − (w˙ k h0f,k ), (4)
k=1
358 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367
Table 1
Description of grid and inlet boundary conditions.
Case description
None-reacting simulations
One mixing tube
Chamber only
Full burner
Reacting simulations
Chamber only
where u is the velocity, ρ the density, p pressure, τ the vis-
cous tensor, Yk the species mass fraction included in the chemical
mechanism of N species, hs the sensible enthalpy, λ the thermal
conductivity, T the temperature, Dk the species diffusivity, w˙ k the
species reaction rate and h0f,k the species formation enthalpies.
Assuming subsonic combustion with low-Mach number, constant
reference pressure p0 may replace thermodynamic pressure in the
equation of state to determine density ρ̄ = ( p0 /RT ), where R is the
ideal gas constant. The viscous heating term and radiation sink
term are neglected in Eq. 4 as they are negligible compared to
the combustion source term. The species mass flux is described
by Fick’s law in the first term on the right hand side of Eq. 3.
Dk may therefore be expressed as the ratio of kinematic viscos-
ity ν to the Schmidt number Sck , which is assumed to be constant
for all species in this work. The dynamic mixture viscosity μ = ρν
and thermal conductivity are modeled by Sutherland’s law and
considering the mixture as a Newtonian fluid τ̄i j = 2μS˜Di j where
S˜D is the deviatoric part of the filtered strain tensor defined as
ij
S˜i j = (∂ u˜i /∂ x˜ j + ∂ u j /∂ xi )/2.
In this system of equations, the second terms in the brack-
ets result from filtering the convective terms and contain subgrid
flow physics. These unclosed quantities are modeled as follows.
The unresolved subgrid scale (SGS) stresses (ui u j − u˜i u˜j ) are mod-
νt
eled as 2νt S˜D , unresolved species fluxes (u
ij iYk − u˜iYk ) as
˜ ∇ Y˜k
νt
and unresolved enthalpy fluxes (u i hs − u˜i hs ) as Prt ∇ hs where Sct
˜ ˜
and Prt are the turbulent Schmidt and Prandtl numbers, taken√to
be unity. The subgrid viscosity is defined as μt = ρνt = ck ρ  k,
where  is the filter size calculated as the cube root of the lo-
cal cell volume and turbulent kinetic energy is provided by the
standard Smagorinsky formulation with dimensionless constants of
ck = 0.07 and ce = 1.05 [13].
The filtered species reaction rates, are modeled using implicit
LES (ILES [14]) approach in which the closure for a species j, is
given by
w˙ j (Yk , T ) = w˙ j (Y˜k , T˜ ),
where the reaction rate is calculated using an Arrhenius expres-
sion. A skeletal mechanism with 38 species and 173 reactions is
used for description of chemistry [15]. The validity of Eq. 5 de-
pends on the relative grid resolution and sub-grid physics. If the
grid resolution is sufficiently fine to adequately resolve the react-
ing layer, Eq. 5 is an appropriate LES modeling assumption for the
combustion source term. The ILES assumption corresponds to a
perfectly stirred reactor (or LES grid cell) with a homogenous sub-
grid species and temperature field and may be evaluated using the
partially stirred reactor (PaSR) model.
LES-PaSR model includes an estimation of the sub-grid scale
segregation between reacting and non-reacting fractions, that is,
 
w˙ j (Yk , T )
w˙ j (Yk , T ) = w˙ j (Y˜k , T˜ ) = κ w˙ j (Y˜k , T˜ ).
w˙ j (Yk , T )
The sub-grid fraction of reacting mixture κ (or segregation factor)
in PaSR is expressed as a function of the sub-grid mixing τ  and
chemical time τ c scales such that
Cell counts (million) Inlet BCs
0.6 Uniform
5 and 9 Mixing tube results
5 (chamber) 7 (mixing tubes) Uniform
2 and 5 Mixing tube results
1 1
κ= = . (7)
1 + τ /τc 1 + Da
In the limit of Da  1, a well stirred sub-grid filter box is implied
and the PaSR model recovers the ILES closure. Da  1 is an indi-
cator of the validity of the ILES assumption. Using Eq. 7, it can be
estimated that for a sub-grid segregation of κ > 0.9 (i.e., a nearly
homogeneous sub-grid field), corresponding to Da < 0.1, the ILES
closure is valid [16]. The ILES assumption is verified using the same
method reported in [17] with a PaSR combustion model detailed
in [18]. Segregation factor found to be well above 0.95 for the re-
gion of interest as shown in Fig. 2 in the premixed case.
Simulations were performed using a custom LES reacting solver
developed under the OpenFOAM platform [19]. The filtered gov-
erning equations, Eqs. 1–4, were discretised using 2nd order spa-
tial and temporal schemes. Time integration was performed im-
plicitly using the PISO method, in which the pressure and velocity
fields are decoupled and solved iteratively, with three PISO correc-
tors. The equations were solved sequentially, with iteration over
the non-linear source terms to obtain rapid convergence, with a
maximum CFL number of 0.2.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Non-reacting simulations
Sct
In order to evaluate the imposed boundary conditions and
the grid resolution, Fig. 3 compares the non-reacting LES results
with the particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements reported
in [12]. Isothermal simulations were performed for the whole
burner (chamber plus all mixing tubes) as well as only the com-
bustion chamber using the inlet boundary conditions imposed
from the results of one mixing tube simulation, see Table 1. Com-
paring the results of both simulations at the measurement lines,
z/D = 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 and 0.7, shows that the imposed inlet boundary
conditions from the stored data reproduce the measured mean and
(5) RMS velocities well.
Figure 3 also shows a good agreement between the LES results
and the PIV data confirming that boundary conditions are correctly
imposed and the flow physics is adequately captured by the solver.
All LES grids well reproduce the size and strength of the recircula-
tion zones as well as the jet spreading and entrainment. All grids
also capture reasonable fluctuations levels. The peaks of fluctua-
tion are seen in the jet shear layers for z/D < 0.6 and further down-
stream, the fluctuation profile becomes relatively flat. The discrep-
ancies between the LES and the measurements are mainly seen in
the jet region where the LES results are symmetric but the PIV
measurements show a net flow towards the negative values of y/D,
see Fig. 3(c). Appearance of the net flow, that is seen at x/D < 0.5
and disappearing further downstream, can be associated with an
unbalanced distribution of the mass flow through the jet nozzles.
(6) At x/D > 0.5, symmetry is recovered as the effect is suppressed by
turbulent mixing in the combustor [12]. The overall good agree-
ment between the LES results and PIV data indicates that the com-
bustor grid resolution (5 million cells) is adequate as further re-
finement of the grid to 9 million cells does not change the results
 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367
Fig. 2. Distribution of segregation factor on a xz-plane crossing the center of the chamber for the premixed case.
Table 2
Operating condition of the burner.
Air mass flow [kg/m3 ] Air/Fuel temp. [K] Equivalence ratio φ Re
0.01 823/293 0.35 110 0 0
noticeably. Thus the combustor chamber with a 5 million-cell grid
is chosen as the numerical domain for the reacting simulations.
3.2. Reacting simulations
Reacting simulations of the burner were performed for the op-
erating condition listed in Table 2. Combustion was initiated by fill-
ing the combustor with the products at equilibrium condition and
imposing uniform inlet profiles of the reactants and temperature.
Velocity profiles, however, are from the results of the simulation of
a mixing tube, leading to a perfectly premixed combustion regime,
denoted here as the premixed case. By imposing the spatially and
temporally non-uniform profiles of reactants1 (and temperature),
combustion becomes partially premixed, which will be referred to
as the stratified case.
Figure 4 shows the distributions of mean normalized axial ve-
locity, temperature and mass fraction of OH, and CO at z/D = 0.1–
0.6 for the premixed and stratified cases. To include the effect of
all jets, mean values are averaged over 40 circles with uniform
radial intervals covering the whole combustor diameter. The re-
sults of the stratified case with a coarser grid are also plotted in
order to evaluate the adequacy of the grid size for the reacting
1
These profiles were extracted from the results of the mixing tube simulation.
359
simulations. A large recirculation zone (RZ) induced by the in-
jectors can be observed at the center of combustor, as seen at
r/D < 0.3 (where U/U0 ≤ 0) in Fig. 4(a). There is also a corner RZ
created between the jets and the wall (r/D > 0.43) due to sudden
expansion of the flow at the chamber inlets. RZs are the main
mechanism providing rapid mixing of the burned gases and the
fresh mixture needed for flameless combustion. Temperature dis-
tribution depicted in Fig. 4(b) reveals that the temperature jump
(Tmax /T0 where T0 = 823) across the flame is approximately 1.8
which is much less than the value for conventional flames (approx-
imately 7). Moreover, maximum temperature in the combustor in
both regimes is well below 1800 K, prohibiting the formation of
thermal NOx in the flameless mode. OH mass fraction (Fig. 4(c))
shows a large distributed reaction zone located downstream at
z/D > 0.4. This zone, created by merging jets, contains a very fuel-
lean, highly diluted, hot, mixture.
Oxidation reactions start closer to the dump plane for the pre-
mixed case, leading to the higher levels of temperature, OH and
CO at z/D ≤ 0.5. Further downstream where the reactants are well
mixed with the hot products the heat releasing reactions begin
for the stratified case, raising the OH and CO levels at z/D ≥ 0.5.
Fig. 4 also shows that the results of the coarse grid match the fine
grid with the maximum difference of 15% for CO. The deviation
is only significant at z/D ≥ 0.6 where grid resolution decreases and
the grid is not fine enough for resolving species gradients.
3.3. Characterization of flameless combustion
3.3.1. Combustion mode graph
As illustrated in Fig. 5, combustion systems may be categorized
into conventional, pilot assisted, high temperature combustion
360 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367

Fig. 3. Comparison of the non-reacting LES results with the PIV measurements.
 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367 361

Fig. 4. Comparison of the distributions of mean normalized axial velocity, temperature and mass fraction of OH and CO at z/D = 0.1–0.6 for the premixed and stratified
cases.
362 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367

Fig. 5. Distribution of (a) premixed and (b) stratified samples on the extended combustion mode graph. The graph maps three combustion modes, conventional, pilot-
assisted, and flameless, with the addition of non-combustible and high-heat-release regions to the physical space for (c) premixed and (d) stratified regimes. (For interpre-
tation of the references to color in this figure, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

(HiTC) and flameless combustion modes based on mixture temper-
ature Tc , auto-ignition temperature Tign , and the maximum tem-
perature rise T = Tmax − Tc , where Tmax is the maximum product
temperature [9,20]. In the original combustion mode graph, global
values of Tc and Tign are used, placing the burner in the pilot as-
sisted mode of the graph for both cases as indicated by the large
blue circles in Fig. 5(a) and (b). Note that the region of the strati-
fied case is larger since Tign varies with mixture composition.
To include the effect of local mixing, we propose a new com-
bustion mode graph by calculating cell-based values for Tc and
Tign . Auto-ignition temperature of each cell is calculated using
zero-dimensional well-stirred reactor calculation using the chem-
ical mechanism from LES. Initial composition of the reactor is set
based on cell values and calculation performed for a residence
time of 1 second at atmospheric pressure [9]. Tc is the cell temper-
ature provided that Tign is below the mean product temperature,
eliminating the non-combustible (very lean or already burnt) cells
from the graph. The resulting graph will be a collection of points
from conventional to flameless mode as shown in Fig. 5(a) and (b).
Small markers were colored by heat release in the cells from a
snapshot of a xz-plane crossing the center of the chamber. By con-
sidering only cells with low heat-release, i.e., excluding red mark-
ers, one can identify the cells which are brought into the flame-
less regime mostly by the effect of rapid mixing with the products.
These cells are located downstream as shown in Fig. 5(c) and (d),
plotted by mapping three2 parts of the combustion mode graphs
to the physical space. Non-combustible and high-heat-release re-
gions are also marked in this figures. Therefore, mixture stratifi-
cation (achieved by injecting fuel in the center of the jets) helps
suppress the thin reaction zone observed at the inner shear layers
of the jets in the premixed case, increasing the probability of burn-
ing fuel downstream in a distributed reaction zone within a large
volume (i.e., flameless combustion).
2
Note that no cell is located in the HiTAC part of the graph.
 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367
Fig. 6. Flowchart of the automatic post-processing algorithm [21].
Creating the local combustion mode graph could become very
expensive since auto-ignition temperature calculation needs to be
done for all cells. Nonetheless, the local graph can be used to con-
firm if a combustor has a chance to burn in flameless mode. A pre-
dominance of non-reacting points in the flameless regime in the
graph, is a strong indication of flameless combustion.
3.3.2. Automatic post-processing
What has been shown so far is obtained by post-processing the
simulations using a traditional approach that is selecting a few im-
portant variables, e.g., temperature, mass fraction of OH, CO, etc.,
and comparing them in different cases or regions. This approach
is established but error-prone as one might easily ignore the in-
fluence of many intermediate species and radicals involved in a
complex mechanism. To avoid this, an automatic post-processing
tool, introduced recently for analyzing high-dimensional combus-
tion data [21] is used in this subsection to gain more insight as to
how flameless mode operates.
In this tool, a high-dimensional composition matrix X = [Ti , Yik ],
where i is a cell and k a species index, is reduced to a 2 or 3-
363
dimensional matrix Y, while preserving the similarity of X. This
is done by using accelerated t-distributed stochastic neighbor em-
bedding (t-SNE) [22]. After post-processing the t-SNE output, the
reduced manifold can be shown in a single plot with an automat-
ically generated colormap and legend that represent respectively
similar regions of the domain and their important features, see
Fig 6.
To generate the input dataset, the instantaneous mass frac-
tion values for all 38 species and temperature on a clipped rz-
plane crossing one jet (z/D = 0 − 0.7 and r/D = 0.25 − 0.5) are
re-sampled over a uniform 2D grid for 10 time steps with the in-
terval of approximately 0.25 flow through time for each LES case,
premixed or stratified. Results from a one-dimensional, freely-
propagating premixed laminar flame study, calculated by the Can-
tera code [23] using same initial condition and mechanism of LES
premixed case, are also added to the dataset as indicator samples.
This leads to an input dataset of roughly 105,0 0 0 samples (rows)
and 39 dimensions (columns). By applying t-SNE to the scaled (us-
ing the same input parameter mentioned in [21] and perplexity
of 250) and shuffled input dataset, an output dataset with the
364 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367

Fig. 7. (a) t-SNE map of the combined dataset consists of premixed, stratified and laminar samples. The same map with (b) stratified or (c) premixed samples are turned off.

Fig. 8. Quantized and labeled t-SNE map generated automatically by the algorithm.

same number of samples but 2 dimensions is obtained. Thus, it
can be plotted using a scatter plot, called t-SNE map, to examine
the structure of the original data.
Figure 7(a) shows the t-SNE map of the combined LES (pre-
mixed and stratified cases) and laminar dataset plotted using the
two components of the reduced manifold. Figure 7(b) and (c) show
the same map while stratified or premixed samples are excluded.
As seen in the map, both LES cases follow the trajectory of the
laminar flame marked with I and II. They also share some simi-
larity in the trajectory III as their samples are embedded close to
each other.3 Other branches indicated by IV and V, however, con-
tain mainly premixed and stratified samples, respectively.
3
Although distance in the t-SNE map is the measure of affinity in the original
data for nearby points, larger distances between pairs of points may not quan-
tify the dissimilarity since the heavy tail of the distribution embeds the dissimilar
points as far as possible to make enough space for modeling similar points accu-
rately [22].
Feeding the output of t-SNE to the automatic labeling algo-
rithm (illustrated as the post-processing box in Fig. 6), the t-
SNE colormap and legend (lists of important features) is obtained.
Figure 8 shows a re-plot of the t-SNE map using the new colormap
to identify the regions marked by I to V. Note that colors 3 and 5
can be considered as one color since their important features are
similar. This is caused by the normality assumption in the cluster-
ing algorithm, Mean Shift [24], that is used for color quantizaion.
Imperfection can also be seen in the small color leakage between
close clusters. Color leakage is due to the applied clustering al-
gorithm for color quantizaion: while t-SNE assumes no normality
in the data, Mean Shift clustering inherently does. In the current
application, clustering carried out in the t-SNE space is meant to
help human interpretability and, strictly speaking, is not the best
technique for this purpose. We plan to identify a better cluster-
ing method or a possible extension of t-SNE to carry out clustering
in future work. Region I is composed of colors 1 and 4, which in
the order given, indicate reactant premixing (high correlation with
 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367 365

Fig. 9. Mapping the identified regions to the LES grid for the premixed (left) and stratified (right) cases. Time is normalized with the flow through time.
366 E. Fooladgar, P. Tóth and C. Duwig / Combustion and Flame 204 (2019) 356–367
C3 H8 and O2 ), fuel decomposition and early low-temperature ox-
idation (high correlation with C3 H6 and CH2 O). Region II can be
identified as reaction zones (for LES and laminar cases) since it
comprises only color 2, representing chain carrier radicals, that is
O, OH and H.
Other regions, namely III to V, represent the production zones
as their samples are highly correlated with main products and
temperature. The difference is that region III (colors 3 and 5),
which is shared by both premixed and stratified samples, is not
associated with temperature and region V (color 6), which mainly
comprises stratified samples, is still related to OH and acetalde-
hyde. Premixed samples forming region IV are the perfect example
of a typical production zone with a clear link to H2 O, CO2 and T.
Figure 9 maps the above identified regions to the LES grid for
the last 4 quarters of a flow through time of the premixed (left)
and stratified (right) cases. Spatial distribution of clusters discov-
ered by the automatic post-processing algorithm complies with the
flow physics surprisingly well. For both cases, well-preheated mix-
ture (color 1) issued from the jet converts to the less stable in-
termediate species due to the initiation reactions (color 4). At the
regions depicted by color 2, high temperature chain branching re-
actions are initiated, generating an abundant pool of O, OH and H
radicals and releasing most of the heat. Finally, regions with mainly
hot stable products are formed as indicated by colors 3 to 7 in the
figure.
The product regions denoted by colors 3 and 5 are generally
distributed close to the chamber wall located at r/D = 0.5. This
shows that the effect of heat loss on the final products is picked up
by the algorithm. The still-reactive product region marked by color
6 is the final stage of the stratified case but can be observed in
a very small region in the premixed case before it is converted to
the large (almost) non-reactive region 7 located mainly in the cen-
ter and downstream of the chamber. The evolution of identified re-
gions shown in Fig. 9 reveals that preheating and reacting regions,
denoted respectively by 1 and 4, are fluctuating much more in the
stratified case. This is associated with the temporal stratification
of the mixture caused by the turbulent flow in the mixing tube.
Overall, temporal and spatial mixture stratification significantly ex-
pands the reactive regions in the chamber, making the combustor
more suitable for burning in the flameless mode.
In the end, there are a few points regarding automatic post-
processing worth emphasizing. First, the whole process is unsuper-
vised which means that the algorithm needs no prior knowledge
and minimum human involvement to discover the important fea-
tures. This makes it a powerful tool for analyzing cases with sub-
tle differences (e.g., the stratified and premixed cases examined
here) where conventional post-processing (see the graphs shown
in Figs. 4 and 5) needs a lot of effort. Second, since several time
steps can be added to the input dataset, the output contains the
effect of the previous time steps without smoothing the peak in-
formation (e.g., by averaging). This is of interest for post-processing
DNS and LES results.4 Third, the results can be shown in a single
graph rather than many connected graphs, that are very difficult
to work with, leading to more efficient analysis (and even moni-
toring). Forth, note that adding the laminar samples is not a nec-
essary step for the algorithm and is done for making the discussion
clear. It also shows another capability of the algorithm that is find-
ing similar expected patterns, e.g., laminar samples, in the data.5
And last, the limitations of the algorithms detailed in [21], includ-
ing computational cost, scaling of the input and imperfect color
4
For example, mean and RMS of the results may indicate that a simulation is
statistically converged but evolution of the recognized clusters may show otherwise.
5
Another practical example is when experimental data is available for a small
region of a domain. The algorithm can be employed to find regions with similarity
to experimental data, in the simulation domain.
quantization, should be considered before pre-processing the input
and analyzing the output.
4. Summary and conclusion
In this paper, a series of Large Eddy Simulations were per-
formed to study a model gas turbine operating in flameless mode.
The simulations were conducted using Finite Rate Chemistry com-
bustion modeling and a detailed skeletal mechanism for chemistry
description. In addition to validating imposed boundary conditions
by comparing with PIV measurements, grid sensitivity analysis and
flow physics description, a new combustion mode graph was pro-
posed to include local mixing effects on the grid level. In the end,
a recently developed automatic post-processing tool was employed
to compare the large amount of high-dimensional data produced
by the simulations performed for premixed and the stratified mix-
tures.
Although both cases seem similar in terms of mean profiles,
the instantaneous data processed by the algorithm reveals that the
stratified mixture produces much larger reactive zones compared
to the premixed one. These large distributed zones release the heat
in a large volume homogeneously, eliminating the thin flame front
observed in conventional combustion.
Overall, the automatic post-processing is found to be very effi-
cient and to have many advantages over the conventional methods.
Therefore, it is suggested that it is employed as a complementing
step to process and analyze the huge amount of data generated by
the complex FRC-LES approach. The demand for this method will
be more pronounced in the future as exponential growth in com-
putational power makes high-fidelity FRC-LES of bio-fuels, with de-
tailed mechanisms incorporating hundreds or thousands of species,
feasible.
Acknowledgment
The financial support of the Swedish Energy Agency (En-
ergimyndigheten) through the program “Computational Optimiza-
tion of Gas Turbine Combustors Firing Biomass Fast Pyrolysis Oil”
(EM 44110-1) is greatly acknowledged. The simulations were run
on LUNARC and HPC2N super-computing facilities within SNIC re-
source allocation.
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