Numerical Modeling for N-Heptane Spray Combustion Processes with Various Ambient Oxygen Concentrations

Abstract

This work has numerically analyzed the structure of spray flames with various ambient oxygen concentrations. To realistically predict the spray evaporation characteristics in the high-pressure diesel-like environment, the present study has employed the high-pressure effective conductivity vaporization model. The detailed n-heptane/air chemistry is represented by 114 elementary steps and 44 chemical species. The Representative Interactive Flamelet (RIF) model is adopted to consider the interactions between turbulence and chemistry in the fast transient reacting flows. In order to account for the spatial inhomogeneity of the scalar dissipation rate, the multiple RIFs are introduced. Moreover, the present approach realistically models the vaporization effects on the mixture fraction fluctuations. For the various conditions of ambient oxygen concentration, numerical results are compared with experimental data including the ignition delay and the lift-off length. These results indicate that the present MRIF approach yields the reasonably good agreement with experimental data in terms of ignition delay time and lift-off length. To gain the physical insight into the two-stage ignition behavior of diesel fuels, the detailed discussions are also made for the temporal evolution of several key species (CH2O, OH, CO) mass fraction and maximum temperature of the transient flamelet as well as the flame stabilization mechanism of the n-heptane spray flames with the much lower ambient oxygen concentration.