Flamelet Versus Detailed Chemistry Large Eddy Simulation for a Liquid-Fueled Gas Turbine Combustor: A Comparison of Accuracy and Computational Cost

Abstract

Abstract A Honeywell liquid-fueled gas turbine test combustor at idle conditions is numerically investigated in simcenterstar-ccm+ version 2020.3. This work presents large eddy simulation (LES) results using both the flamelet generated manifold (FGM) and detailed chemistry combustion models. Both take advantage of a hybrid chemical (HyChem) mechanism which has previously demonstrated very good accuracy for real fuels such as Jet-A with only 47 species. The objective of this work is to investigate the ability of FGM and detailed chemistry modeling to capture pollutant formation in an aero-engine combustor. Comparisons for NOx, CO, unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), and soot are made, along with the radial temperature profile. To fully capture potential emissions, a soot moment model and Zeldovich NOx model are employed along with radiation. A comparison of results with and without chemistry acceleration techniques for detailed chemistry is included. Then, computational costs are assessed by comparing the performance and scalability of the simulations with each of the combustion models. It is found that the detailed chemistry case with clustering can reproduce nearly identical results to detailed chemistry without any acceleration if CO is added as a clustering variable. With the Lagrangian model settings chosen for this study, the detailed chemistry results compared more favorably with the experimental data than FGM; however, there is uncertainty in the secondary breakup parameters. Sensitivity of the results to a key parameter in the spray breakup model is provided for both FGM and complex chemistry (CC). By varying this breakup rate, the FGM case can predict CO, NOx, and UHC equally well. The smoke number, however, is predicted most accurately by CC. The cost for running detailed chemistry with clustering is found to be about four times that of FGM for this combustor and chemical mechanism.