Fuel and chemistry effects in high Karlovitz premixed turbulent flames

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations of turbulent premixed flames at high Karlovitz numbers are performed using detailed chemistry. Different fuels, chemical mechanisms, and equivalence ratios are considered and their effects on turbulent flame speed, geometry of the reaction zone, and fuel burning rate are analyzed. Differential diffusion effects are systematically isolated by performing simulations with both non-unity and unity Lewis numbers. Heavy fuels with above unity Lewis numbers are considered. In the unity Lewis number limit, the n-heptane, iso-octane, toluene, and methane flames at a given reaction zone Karlovitz number present similar normalized turbulent flame speeds and fuel burning rates close to their respective laminar values. When differential diffusion effects are included, the turbulent flame speeds are lower than their unity Lewis number counterparts due to a reduction in the fuel burning rate. The turbulent reaction zone surface areas increase with the turbulence intensity but are not strongly affected by fuel, equivalence ratio, chemical mechanism, or differential diffusion. The geometry of the reaction zone is studied through the probability density functions of strain rate and curvature which are very similar when normalized by Kolmogorov scales at the reaction zone. The dependence of the chemical source terms on the scalar dissipation rate in the unity Lewis number case is shown and the distributions of scalar dissipation rate on the reaction surface are similar to those of passive scalars in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The reduced burning rates in the presence of differential diffusion are discussed. The present results indicate that mean turbulent flame properties such as burning velocity and fuel consumption can be predicted with the knowledge of only a few global laminar flame properties. Once normalized by the corresponding laminar flame quantities, fuel and chemistry effects in high Karlovitz number premixed turbulent flames are mostly limited to differential diffusion.