Chemical energy release and dynamics of transitional, reactive shear flows

Abstract

Results are reported from numerical studies of a compressible, subsonic reactive mixing layer, on the the effects of chemical-reaction exothermicity on the shear-layer development, and the dependence of these effects on initial conditions. The model solves the unsteady, conservation equations for mass, momentum, energy, and species concentrations. The convective transport equations are solved using the flux-corrected transport (FCT) algorithm and appropriate inflow and outflow boundary conditions. A one-step, irreversible, Arrhenius chemical reaction rate, and realistic (species- and temperature-dependent) modeling of diffusive transport are coupled with the convective transport using time-step splitting. The system studied consists of nonpremixed coflowing streams, where both the fuel (faster stream, hydrogen) and the oxidizer (slower stream, oxygen) are diluted in nitrogen. To facilitate the analysis of the results the flow is organized by low-level, single-frequency velocity perturbation at the inflow. The simulations show that energy release has the effect of reducing the shear layer growth and the amount of chemical product formed−relative to the corresponding cases for which exothermicity is not accounted for, in qualitative agreement with results from previous investigations. The relative mixing-layer growth reduction becomes more pronounced for larger energy release and lower Re, and is significant in terms of both, Reynolds stress, ρu′v′, and the velocity-fluctuation correlation u′v′. In spite of the relatively fast flows studied, for the regimes considered, the results on the initial mixing-layer growth are significantly sensitive to diffusive transport effects−more so in terms of Reynolds stress, than in terms of product formation. With larger energy release here associated to larger free-stream reactant molar fractions c0, the amount of chemical product in absolute terms is found to increase with energy release−but slower than c0, so that the product formation becomes effectively less efficient. The results of the present work highlight the difficulties involved in making general statements about the effects of exothermicity on the mixing-layer growth, indicating that a careful conceptualization of these properties in terms of initial conditions and other characteristic parameters of the reactive systems under study is required.