Simulation Of Combustion Research Articles

Research on Scavenging Flow Dynamics of Marine Two-Stroke Engines With a CFD-Derived Quasi-Dimensional Model

The complex in-cylinder gas state and flow significantly affect fuel-air mixture, combustion efficiency and emissions. However, the scavenging CFD model of large bore marine engines in digital twin system requires substantial computational resources. Therefore, a fast-run phenomenological model of the scavenging process is built in this study. The model simulates the thermal states and flow dynamics of inlet and exhaust gas based on the energy and momentum conservation principles, considering the ideal in-cylinder swirl velocity profile with effects of air mass loss, wall friction, and swirl shear. The model’s accuracy is confirmed by comparing it with CFD simulations on different engines, showing an average relative error less than 3.5%. It also analyzes the impacts of intake pressure. The model provides accurate boundary conditions for subsequent fuel spray, combustion, and emission simulations and can be combined with these models in the future, thereby applied to engine design, diagnostics, and control.

Dual-range emission spectroscopy for temperature measurement of laminar aluminum dust flames

Understanding the temperature fields/profiles in aluminum dust flames is critical to the design of aluminum-based sustainable fuels and the development of aluminum combustion simulation tools. Although emission spectroscopy has been applied in aluminum flames, the signals in most works were integrated along the recording path and over the whole flame and, therefore, the measurements could not provide information of the flame spatial structure. In addition, the details of the diagnostic method were scarcely introduced. This work develops a dual-range emission spectroscopy diagnostic system for 1D measurements of the liquid temperature and the flame temperature of aluminum flames. The important aspects for diagnostics, such as the instrument specifications, signal acquisition strategy, data processing, accuracy and precision, are introduced and quantified in detail. The continuous spectrum from the liquid phase of Al(L) and/or Al2O3(L), rovibrational AlO spectrum from the micro-diffusion flame, and 2D flame luminosity are recorded simultaneously. Based on Planck's law, a linear fitting method is implemented to derive a continuous spectrum temperature. A nonlinear minimization framework based on the stick spectrum is introduced to fit the AlO spectra and derive a AlO temperature. The accuracy and precision are quantified by a comparison of the average temperatures against the equilibrium temperatures and the standard deviations. The effectiveness of this technique for temperature measurements of aluminum dust flames is verified by the agreement of the continuous spectrum temperature and the AlO temperature in the post-flame region. The 1D distribution of the continuous spectrum temperature indicates the boiling of Al and the dissociation/condensation of Al2O3 from upstream to downstream through the flame. The 1D temperature distributions also present a lag of the continuous spectrum temperature compared to the AlO temperature, indicating that the continuous spectrum temperature is dominated by the Al fuel droplets and the Al2O3 caps, instead of the Al2O3 nanometric droplets.

A Conservative Solid-Gas Coupling Scheme with Overlapping Meshes for Combustion Simulation of Propellants with Voids

ABSTRACT A conservative coupling scheme with overlapping meshes for the combustion simulation of propellants with voids is established. The two main ingredients of this scheme are the conservative calculation of fluxes of mass, momentum, energy, and species and the robust treatment of voids. Specifically, for the discrete flux calculation, firstly the solid-gas interfaces are captured by the level-set method and then sampling points are generated between the interfaces at consecutive time steps, and these points are used to ensure the conservation of these quantities up to each grid of the gas domain. For the second ingredient, the void before exposure is treated as “solid” with properties of the air. Once an exposure condition is met, the topological change of the void is realized by reinitializing the level set function inside and on the boundary of the void. Overall, the scheme is conservative and robust, which is validated with experimental results.

An embedded deep learning model discrepancy for computational combustion simulations

An embedded deep learning model discrepancy for computational combustion simulations

Effect of water vapor content on the corrosion mechanism of HR3C in simulated oxy-coal combustion environment

The corrosion performance of the HR3C steels covered with salt deposition (Na2SO4:K2SO4 = 1:1) was investigated under various water vapor content at 700 °C. Results show that the HR3C alloy undergoes severe pitting and sulfidation in a dry corrosive atmosphere (0.5SO2-4O2-CO2) and the corrosion products are peculiarly prone to peel off. In comparison, the corrosion behavior is gradually mitigated with increasing water vapor content. In highly humid corrosive gas (0.5SO2-4O2-20H2O-CO2), the corrosion degree is remarkably faint and the dominant corrosion mode is oxidation. The mechanism responsible for the transition of corrosion mode as water vapor content varied is discussed in detail.

Computational Study on Compressor-Combustor Interactions for Improved Matching of a Micro Gas Turbine

ABSTRACT Understanding complex aerodynamics/combustion interactions across major components of aeroengines, including the compressor, combustor and turbine is demanded for the improved performance of advanced propulsion systems. This study employs high-fidelity CFD simulations to investigate the coupled compressor-combustor interactions for the improved performance of a micro gas turbine. In the prototype configuration, the deficient compressor/combustor matching causes insufficient air/fuel mixing and delayed combustion inside the combustor chamber. By reducing the flow area of the compressor and redistributing the air holes on the combustor chamber, a stable united recirculation structure is formed to promote air/fuel mixing and efficient combustion, achieving a over 50% decrease in OTDF and RTDF at the combustor exit and a total 20% decrease of pressure loss in the entire engine through-flow. Compared with the single-component combustor simulation, the coupled compressor-combustor results exhibit stronger turbulence mixing, increased temperature uniformity inside the combustor chamber. Compared with the single-component compressor simulation, the compressor in the multi-component simulation shows the reduced flow angle and Mach number at the compressor outlet, leading to increased stall critical angles and delayed flow separation at the compressor diffuser and vanes. This demonstrates that the added combustor endues the compressor with an expanded operating range and a lower mass-flow rate instability boundary. This work implies that 3D multi-component CFD simulation is necessary to understand the aerodynamic and combustion interactions and improve the multi-component matching in gas turbine engines.

Numerical analysis of flow and combustion of Coal-Ammonia blend in coal-fired furnace

Co-firing ammonia (NH3) in coal-fired power plants presents an attractive method to expedite the global decarbonization process. Nevertheless, the challenge lies in reconciling the need for higher temperatures within the furnace with the imperative of maintaining low nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, which limits the widespread use of NH3 as a fuel. In this article, the flow and combustion of coal-NH3 blends in a 3 × 700 MW tangentially-fired utility coal boiler furnace are investigated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The impact of NH3 blending ratios is examined through numerically simulated combustion involving five co-firing ratios (CRs) of NH3, including 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 50%. Various combustion properties are assessed, including the furnace’s temperature profile, flow distribution, species emissions, pollutant formation, and heat generation. To validate the approach, single coal and coal blend simulations performed depicted reasonable agreement in predicting furnace flame temperatures. The predicted flue gas temperature exhibited a decrease with an increase in NH3 CR, leading to a reduction in the furnace’s heat generation. Regarding flow characteristics, there was a notable increase in velocity as the concentration of NH3 was raised. The elevated NH3 content correlated with an observed rise in oxygen (O2) residue in the rear pass, coupled with a decrease in both carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations. Pollutant formation, assessed in terms of nitrogen oxide (NO) emissions, revealed an increase in concentration with the rise in NH3 CR. Indeed, these findings suggest a promising strategy for adopting NH3 as a viable alternative to coal, representing an effective carbon-neutral fuel for the future.

Skeletal CH3OH/NOx Kinetic Model for Simulating Spark-Ignition and Turbulent Jet Ignition Engines.

Methanol is a promising renewable fuel for achieving a better engine combustion efficiency and lower exhaust emissions. Under exhaust gas recirculation conditions, trace amounts of nitrogen oxides have been shown to participate in fuel oxidation and impact the ignition characteristics significantly. Despite numerous studies that analyzed the methanol/NOx interaction, no reliable skeletal kinetic mechanism is available for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling. This work focuses on developing a skeletal CH3OH/NOx kinetic model consisting of 25 species and 55 irreversible and 27 reversible reactions, used for full-cycle engine combustion simulations. New experiments of methanol with the presence of 200 ppmv NO/NO2 were conducted in a rapid compression machine (RCM) at engine-relevant conditions (20-30 bar, 850-950 K). Experimental results indicate notable enhancement effects of the presence of NO/NO2 on methanol ignition under the conditions tested, which highlights the importance of including the CH3OH/NOx interactions in predicting combustion performance. The proposed skeletal mechanism was validated against the literature and new methanol and methanol/NOx experiments over a wide range of operating conditions. Furthermore, the skeletal mechanism was applied in three-dimensional (3D) CFD full-cycle simulations of spark-ignition (SI) and turbulent jet ignition (TJI) engine combustion using methanol. Simulation results demonstrate good agreement with experimental measurements of pressure traces and engine metrics, proving that the proposed skeletal mechanism is suitable and sufficient for CFD simulations.

Numerical Analysis of Postcombustion Effects on the Supersonic Jet Behavior

During the top blowing process of the basic oxygen furnace, the oxygen jet may react with CO before it reaches the surface of the molten bath. This combustion reaction affects the dynamic characteristics of the jet, which, in turn, affects its interaction with the bath. In this study, a numerical model is developed to investigate the transient and steady combustion characteristics of the supersonic jet emitted from the top lance. The transient combustion simulation shows that the CO ratio gradually decreases while the CO2 mole fraction increases at the interaction boundary region between jet and ambient due to the chemical reactions. In addition, the jet profile is changed when the postcombustion is introduced. Due to the flame formation and turbulence change at the jet combustion interface, the axial velocity at height of 2 m (x = 73 re) is 89% higher than that of the noncombustion reaction jet flow. In the results, it is demonstrated that the combustion interface is favorable to reduce the jet decay, resulting a higher dynamic pressure before the jet reaches the bath surface. Furthermore, a higher core temperature and lower density are obtained for the combustion jet compared to that of without combustion reaction.

Mathematical Simulation of Turbulent Combustion of Air–Propane Mixture in Swirl Flow

Mathematical Simulation of Turbulent Combustion of Air–Propane Mixture in Swirl Flow

Simulations of flaming combustion and flaming-to-smoldering transition in wildland fire spread at flame scale

Our objective in the present study is to provide basic insights into the coupling between external-gas and solid biomass vegetation processes that control the dynamics of flame spread in wildland fire problems. We focus on a modeling approach that resolves processes occurring at vegetation and flame scales, i.e., the formation of flammable vapors due to the thermal degradation of the solid biomass, the subsequent combustion in ambient air, the thermal feedback to the biomass through radiative and convective heat transfer, and the possible transition from flaming combustion (taking place outside of the solid biomass) to smoldering combustion (taking place inside the solid biomass). The capability uses a multiphase combustion framework and treats external-gas processes through a Large Eddy Simulation solver and solid biomass processes through a discrete particle model. The discrete particle model adopts a one-dimensional porous medium formulation, includes descriptions of drying, thermal pyrolysis, oxidative pyrolysis, and char oxidation, as well as a description of the external-gas-to-solid-biomass diffusion of oxygen mass; the discrete particle model thereby provides a treatment of in-depth oxidative processes and allows the simulation of smoldering combustion. The modeling capability is applied to the simulation of fire spread across a surrogate biomass vegetation bed corresponding to a discrete array of cylindrical-shaped, vertically-oriented, pine wood sticks, characterized by a monomodal size distribution, in horizontal flat terrain and under wind-aided conditions. The numerical results demonstrate that the model can simulate successful flaming-to-smoldering transition followed by complete biomass consumption.Novelty and Significance statement:• A new computational model is proposed to simulate wildland fire behavior at high levels of resolution capable of capturing vegetation- and flame-scale phenomena.• Solid biomass vegetation processes are treated using a discrete particle model that features a porous medium formulation and includes a description of in-depth oxygen mass diffusion, and exothermic oxidative pyrolysis and char oxidation reactions.• The computational model is shown to be capable of simulating the transition from flaming to smoldering combustion, often observed in wildland fire spread problems.

High Temperature Oxidation of Additively and Traditionally Manufactured Inconel 718

Abstract Additively manufactured nickel-based superalloys are now being considered as a replacement for traditionally manufactured components on commercial and military aircraft. While the potential of additive manufacturing for gas turbine engines is promising, the quality and performance of additive manufactured components still need extensive study. Coupon-sized test specimens comprised of as-printed additively and traditionally manufactured Inconel 718 with and without yttria-stabilized zirconia thermal barrier coating were tested under simulated isothermal and thermal cycling combustion conditions that were representative of gas turbine environments. Pre-test scanning electron microscopy indicated that traditionally manufactured coupons had a smooth surface finish with minor imperfections while additive manufactured coupons had a rough surface finish. Post-test scanning electron microscopy exhibited differences in oxide scale between the isothermal and thermal cycling conditions. The thermal cycling condition increased the amount of oxide scale for both additively manufactured and traditionally manufactured Inconel 718. The size of the oxide islands on traditionally manufactured coupons was significantly larger than the additively manufactured coupons. The results indicated that differences in surface roughness may affect the growth of the oxidation scale in a high-temperature combustion environment. The benefits of yttria-stabilized zirconia thermal barrier coating were characterized. The substrate of the coupons experienced little to no formation of oxide scales compared to the uncoated additive and traditionally manufactured coupons. The results further suggested that yttria-stabilized zirconia thermal barrier coating can be utilized to provide both insulation and oxidation protection when desired. Post-test energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry results corresponded well with known elemental compositions and oxidation mechanisms.

Brief Review of Recent Achievements in the Flamelet Manifold Selection and Probability Density Distribution for Flamelet Manifold Variables

Abstract The flamelet model is a commonly used tool for turbulent combustion simulations in the engineering field due to its computational efficiency and compatibility with complex chemical reaction mechanisms. Despite being widely used for decades, the flamelet model still faces challenges when applied to complex flame configurations, such as partially premixed flames, inhomogeneous inlets, supersonic combustion, or multiphase combustion. The principal challenges are posed by the uncertainty of the presumed shapes for probability density functions (PDFs) of the flamelet tabulation variables and the coupled process of turbulent diffusion and chemical reaction in turbulent combustion. Recent progress is reviewed from the viewpoint of the reaction manifold, with connections made to other combustion models, as well as the determination of joint (or conditional) PDFs for flamelet manifold parameters (e.g., progress variable, scalar dissipation rates, etc.). Promising improvements have been outlined in computational efficiency and the accuracy of predicted variable fields in simulating complex combustion systems (such as turbulent inhomogeneous combustion, combustion with multi-regime modes, and two-phase combustion). Advances in computational resources, direct numerical simulation data, artificial intelligence, stochastic simulation methods, and other dimension-reduction combustion models will contribute to the development of more accurate and efficient flamelet-like models for engineering applications.

PeleMP: The Multiphysics Solver for the Combustion Pele Adaptive Mesh Refinement Code Suite

Abstract Combustion encompasses multiscale, multiphase reacting flow physics spanning a wide range of scales from the molecular scales, where chemical reactions occur, to the device scales, where the turbulent flow is affected by the geometry of the combustor. This scale disparity and the limited measurement capabilities from experiments make modeling combustion a significant challenge. Recent advancements in high-performance computing (HPC), particularly with the Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project (ECP), have enabled high-fidelity simulations of practical applications to be performed. The major physics submodels, including chemical reactions, turbulence, sprays, soot, and thermal radiation, exhibit distinctive computational characteristics that need to be examined separately to ensure efficient utilization of computational resources. This paper presents the multiphysics solver for the Pele code suite, called PeleMP, which consists of models for spray, soot, and thermal radiation. The mathematical and algorithmic aspects of the model implementations are described in detail as well as the verification process. The computational performance of these models is benchmarked on multiple supercomputers, including Frontier, an exascale machine. Results are presented from production simulations of a turbulent sooting ethylene flame and a bluff-body swirl stabilized spray flame with sustainable aviation fuels to demonstrate the capability of the Pele codes for modeling practical combustion problems with multiphysics. This work is an important step toward the exascale computing era for high-fidelity combustion simulations providing physical insights and data for predictive modeling of real-world devices.

Utilizing neural networks to supplant chemical kinetics tabulation through mass conservation and weighting of species depletion

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have emerged as a powerful tool in combustion simulations to replace memory-intensive tabulation of integrated chemical kinetics. Complex reaction mechanisms, however, present a challenge for standard ANN approaches as modeling multiple species typically suffers from inaccurate predictions on minor species. This paper presents a novel ANN approach which can be applied on complex reaction mechanisms in tabular data form, and only involves training a single ANN for a complete reaction mechanism. The approach incorporates a network architecture that automatically conserves mass and employs a particular loss weighting based on species depletion. Both modifications are used to improve the overall ANN performance and individual prediction accuracies, especially for minor species mass fractions. To validate its effectiveness, the approach is compared to standard ANNs in terms of performance and ANN complexity. Four distinct reaction mechanisms (H2, C7H16, C12H26, OME34) are used as a test cases, and results demonstrate that considerable improvements can be achieved by applying both modifications.

2.3 MW Biomass Steam Power Plant: Experimental and Thermodynamic Analysis

The present paper shows the experimental and numerical analysis of a biomass plant from maximum power of 2.3 MW. This is a classical Steam Power Plant with a maximum pressure of 48 bar and a turbine inlet temperature of about 430 °C at the design point. The size is significantly smaller than the mean of this t system [1], [2], [3], [4], but maintains a relative high value (about 22.9%) of the Global Electric Efficiency. The analysis was conducted using experimental data, collected directly on the Power Plant, at the Design Point, and thus validating thermodynamic models. The difficulty in collecting the experimental data of this type of system, is mainly due to the enormous variability of the lower heating value of biomass, which involves a large variability of the load and then the operating parameters. Combustion simulation was experimental data (Flue gas temperature, air flow, fuel flow) and the results allowed the evaluation of the biomass composition that is within the range reported in the literature [5]. Different Plant configurations were, numerically, evaluated to plug the power fluctuations due to variability of biomass. A 100 kWe Natural Gas fuelled Turbine (MGT) was numerically connected to the Steam Power Plant (BSPP) to evaluate the benefits on the power fluctuations and on the Global Electric Efficiency. A MGT thermodynamic scheme has been developed and, properly, validated with experimental data from literature [6] e [7]. It is designed to send the hot gases coming from the exit of the MGT in the combustion c main system, thus creating a MGT-ST Analysis of the results of this coupling has noticed an improvement in terms of efficiency and operational stability

Turbulence Measurements Downstream of a Combustor Simulator Designed for Studies on the Combustor–Turbine Interaction

Turbulence intensity impacts the performance of turbine stages and it is an important inlet boundary condition for CFD computations; the knowledge of its value at the turbine inlet is then of paramount importance. In combustor–turbine interaction experimental studies, combustor simulators replace real combustors and allow for the introduction of flow perturbation at the turbine inlet. Therefore, the turbulence intensity of a combustor simulator used in a wide experimental campaign at Politecnico di Milano is characterized using a hot-wire probe in a blow-down wind tunnel, and the results are compared to URANS CFD computations. This combustor simulator can generate a combination of a swirl profile with a steady/unsteady temperature disturbance. In the cold unsteady disturbance case, hot-wire measurements are phase-averaged at the frequency of the injected perturbation. The combustor simulator turbulence intensity is measured at two different axial positions to understand its evolution.

A priori direct numerical simulation assessment of MILD combustion modelling in the context of large eddy simulation

A priori Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) assessment of the closures for the filtered reaction rate and the Favre-filtered scalar dissipation rate (SDR) for large eddy simulations (LES) of homogenous and stratified mixture MILD combustion has been performed. It has been found that the probability density function of the reaction progress variable can be adequately predicted using the beta function for both homogenous and stratified mixture MILD combustion. It has also been found that a scalar dissipation rate closure characteristic of passive scalar mixing may not be suitable for homogenous and stratified mixture MILD combustion. The predictions of different filtered reaction rate closures have been assessed with respect to DNS data in this study. The Eddy Dissipation Concept (EDC), Eddy-Break Up (EBU) model, and SDR-based reaction rate closures for Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations have been extended for MILD combustion in the context of LES. The SDR-based reaction rate closure captures the qualitative behaviour but overpredicts the filtered reaction rate for both homogenous and stratified mixture MILD combustion. The EBU-based reaction rate and flame surface density (FSD) closures did not capture the qualitative behaviour of the filtered reaction rate for both homogenous and stratified mixture MILD combustion. By contrast, the EDC model with bridging functions, which ensures asymptotic behaviour, shows the potential to provide reasonable predictions of the filtered reaction rate for a wide range of filter widths in the cases investigated here.

A portable coding strategy to exploit vectorization on combustion simulations

The complexity of combustion simulations demands the latest high-performance computing tools to accelerate its time-to-solution results. A current trend on HPC systems is the utilization of CPUs with SIMD or vector extensions to exploit data parallelism. Our work proposes a strategy to improve the automatic vectorization of finite-element-based scientific codes. The approach applies a parametric configuration to the data structures to help the compiler detect the block of codes that can take advantage of vector computation while maintaining the code portable. A detailed analysis of the computational impact of this methodology on the different stages of a CFD solver is studied on the PRECCINSTA burner simulation. Our parametric implementation has proven to help the compiler generate more vector instructions in the assembly operation: this results in a reduction of up to 9.39× of the total executed instruction maintaining constant the Instructions Per Cycle and the CPU frequency. The proposed strategy improves the performance of the CFD case under study up to 4.67× on the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer.

A Generalised Series Model for the LES of Premixed and Non-Premixed Turbulent Combustion

In this study, the generality and prediction accuracy of a generalised series model for the large eddy simulation of premixed and non-premixed turbulent combustion is explored. The model is based on the Taylor series expansion of the chemical source term in scalar space and implemented into OpenFOAM. The mathematical model does not depend on combustion regimes and has the correct limiting behaviour. The numerical error sources are also outlined and analysed. The model is first applied to a piloted methane/air non-premixed jet flame (Sandia Flame D). The statistical (time-averaged and RMS) results agree well with the experimental measurements, particularly with regard to the mixture fraction, velocity, temperature, and concentrations of major species CH4, CO2, H2O, and O2. However, the concentrations of the intermediates CO and H2 are over-predicted, due to the limitations of the reduced reaction mechanism employed. Then, a Bunsen-piloted flame is simulated. Most of the statistical properties of both the reactive species and progress variables are well reproduced. The only major discrepancy evident is in the temperature, which is probably attributed to the experimental uncertainties of temperature fields in the pilot stream. These findings demonstrate the model’s generality for both a premixed and non-premixed combustion simulation, as well as the accuracy of prediction of reactive species distribution.