Proposal of United Combustion Model for Premixed and Diffusion Flames and Its Evaluation

Abstract

A premixed flame assisted by the burning of a diffusion flame is used in gas-turbine combustors to reduce NOx emissions. A united model that can be applied to the premixed and diffusion flames is therefore required to simulate the combustion phenomena. This paper proposes such a united model based on the author’s premixed combustion model for reactive progress variable equation. The proposed model has the following features. 1) It includes the laminar flame speed and the gradient of the mixture fraction as parameters. When the gradient of the mixture fraction is close to zero, the model is also close to the previous premixed combustion model as an asymptotic form. 2) It considers the effects of pressure in the combustor, unburned gas temperature, and flame stretch on combustion based on the laminar flame speed. 3) It can be applied to all types of turbulence models like the k-ε model, large eddy simulations, and direct simulations in the case of wrinkled laminar flames. The effect of turbulence is considered through the turbulent eddy viscosity of all turbulence models. To verify the accuracy of the model, the opposed diffusion flame presented by Tsuji and Yamaoka was numerically simulated, as an example of a laminar diffusion flame. Further, a turbulent diffusion flame, which was assisted by the burning of a pilot jet, was demonstrated using the united combustion model as an example of the turbulent diffusion flame discussed by Barlow and Frank. The flame was known as Sandia Flame D. Model results were in good agreement with the experimental data and this agreement confirmed the proposed united model was able to accurately simulate both diffusion flames.