On the eddy break-up coefficient

Abstract

Advanced combustion models for turbulent reactive flow are still not at a stage where they are useful for engineering calculations of practical systems such as gas turbine combustors. State-of-the-art methods still use the Eddy Break-Up (EBU) model to give the fast chemistry limit to the reaction rate with a global kinetics formula being used to estimate the kinetically limited rates. While there must continue to be basic reservations about the general correctness of the EBU approach, it has recently been shown that the EBU limit does have a basis in theory for the nonpremixed case. The theoretical result of Bilger for the mixing-limited reaction rate shows that it is proportional to the probability density of the mixture being at stoichiometric. The EBU model, however, takes it as being proportional to the mass fraction of the deficient reactant, but this is in turn a property of the mixture fraction pdf (probability density function) under fast chemistry conditions. The theoretical result can be used to evaluate the correct value of the EBU coefficient, which is usually taken as a constant but with quite widely varying values. In this paper the authors evaluate this theoretical value for the EBU coefficient using two commonlymore » adopted forms of the pdf. Recommendations are made with regard to the best values to use in practice.« less