Impact of the chemical description on direct numerical simulations and large eddy simulations of turbulent combustion in industrial aero-engines

Le développement de nouvelles technologies pour le transport aérien moins polluant est de plus en plus basé sur la simulation numérique, qui nécessite alors une description fiable de la chimie. Pour la plupart des carburants, la description de la combustion nécessite des mécanismes détaillés mais leur utilisation dans une simulation numérique de combustion turbulente est limitée par le coût calcul. Des mécanismes cinétiques réduits et des méthodes de tabulation ont été proposés pour surmonter ce problème. Ces descriptions chimiques simplifiées ayant été développées dans le cadre de configurations laminaires, cette thèse propose de les évaluer dans des configurations turbulentes: une DNS de flamme prémélangée méthane/air de type Bunsen et une LES d’un brûleur expérimental. Les mécanismes sont analysés en termes de structure de flamme, paramètres de flamme globaux, longuer de flamme, prediction des concentrations en espèces majoritaires et des émissions polluantes. Une méthodologie pour évaluer a priori la capacité d’un mécanisme à prédire correctement des phénomènes chimiques tridimensionnels est proposée en se basant sur les résultats de flammes laminaires monodimensionnelles non étirées et étirées. Il ressort que, d’une part, pour construire un mécanisme réduit, il est nécessaire de faire un compromis entre coût calcul, robustesse et qualité des résultats. D’autre part, la qualité des résultats de DNS et LES de configurations tridimensionnelles turbulentes peut être anticipée par une analyse du comportement des schémas réduits dans des configurations simplifiées de flammes monodimensionnelles laminaires non étirées et étirées. ABSTRACT : A growing need for numerical simulations based on reliable chemistries has been observed in the last years in order to develop new technologies which could guarantee the reduction of the enviromental impact on air transport. The description of combustion requires the use of detailed kinetic mechanisms for most hydro-carbons. Their use in turbulent combustion simulation is still prohibitive because of their high computational cost. Reduced chemistries and tabulation methods have been proposed to over-come this problem. Since all these reductions have been developed for laminar configurations, this thesis proposes to evaluate their performances in simulations of turbulent configurations such as a DNS of a premixed Bunsen methane/air flame and a LES of an experimental PREC-CINSTA burner. The mechanisms are analysed in terms of flame structure, global burning parameters, flame length, prediction of major species concentrations and pollutant emissions. An a priori methodology based on one-dimensional unstrained and strained laminar flames to evaluate the mechanism capability to predict three-dimensional turbulent flame features is therefore proposed. On the one hand when building a new reduced scheme, its requirements should be fixed compromising the computational cost, the robustness of the chemical description and the desired quality of results. On the other hand, the quality of DNS or LES results in three-dimensional configurations could be anticipated testing the reduced mechanism on laminar one-dimensional premixed unstrained and strained flames

A conservative model for high-throughput synthesis of nanoparticles in reacting gas flows

Considerable progress has been made over the past decades in the modeling of gas-phase synthesis of nanoparticles. However, when the nanoparticles mass fraction is large representing up to 50 % of the mixture mass fraction, some issues can be observed in the self-consistent modeling of the production process. In particular, enthalpy exchanges between gas and particle phases and differential diffusion between the two phases are usually neglected, since the particle mass fraction is generally very small. However, when high nanoparticle mass fractions are encountered, these simplifications may cause non conservation of the total enthalpy or the total mass. In the present paper, we propose a conservative model for nanoparticles production from gas-phase processes with a high throughput of nanoparticles. The model is derived in order to satisfy conservations of both enthalpy and mass and is validated on laminar one-dimensional premixed and non-premixed flames. In particular, it is shown that the enthalpy of the particle phase as well as the differential diffusion of the gas phase with respect to the particle phase cannot be generally neglected when the nanoparticles concentration is high to preserve the accuracy of the numerical results

A conservative model for high-throughput synthesis of nanoparticles in reacting gas flows

Considerable progress has been made over the past decades in the modeling of gas-phase synthesis of nanoparticles. However, when the nanoparticles mass fraction is large representing up to 50 % of the mixture mass fraction, some issues can be observed in the self-consistent modeling of the production process. In particular, enthalpy exchanges between gas and particle phases and differential diffusion between the two phases are usually neglected, since the particle mass fraction is generally very small. However, when high nanoparticle mass fractions are encountered, these simplifications may cause non conservation of the total enthalpy or the total mass. In the present paper, we propose a conservative model for nanoparticles production from gas-phase processes with a high throughput of nanoparticles. The model is derived in order to satisfy conservations of both enthalpy and mass and is validated on laminar one-dimensional premixed and non-premixed flames. In particular, it is shown that the enthalpy of the particle phase as well as the differential diffusion of the gas phase with respect to the particle phase cannot be generally neglected when the nanoparticles concentration is high to preserve the accuracy of the numerical results

Impact of the chemical description on a Large Eddy Simulation of a lean partially premixed swirled flame

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Large Eddy Simulation of combustion instabilities in a lean partially premixed swirled flame

This paper investigates one issue related to Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of self- excited combustion instabilities in gas-fueled swirled burners: the effects of incom- plete mixing between the gas injection and the combustion chamber. For simplicity reasons, many LES assume perfect premixing of the gases entering the combustion chamber. In practice this is rarely the case and this study addresses the question by comparing LES assuming perfect premixing and LES where the fuel jets are resolved and fuel/air mixing is explicitely computed. This is done for the Preccin- sta swirled burner which has been carefully studied experimentally at DLR. All previous LES studies of Preccinsta have assumed perfect premixing and this work demonstrates that this assumption is reasonable for stable flows but is not accept- able to predict self-excited unstable cases. This is shown by comparing LES and experimental fields in terms of mean and RMS fields of temperature, species and velocities as well as mixture fraction pdfs and unsteady activity for two regimes: a stable one at equivalence ratio 0.83 and an unstable one at 0.7

Impact de la description chimique dans une simulation numérique directe et une simulation aux grandes échelles de la combustion turbulente dans des foyers aéronautiques

Le développement de nouvelles technologies pour le transport aérien moins polluant est de plus en plus basé sur la simulation numérique, qui nécessite alors une description fiable de la chimie. Pour la plupart des carburants, la description de la combustion nécessite des mécanismes détaillés mais leur utilisation dans une simulation numérique de combustion turbulente est limitée par le coût calcul. Des mécanismes cinétiques réduits et des méthodes de tabulation ont été proposés pour surmonter ce problème. Ces descriptions chimiques simplifiées ayant été développées dans le cadre de configurations laminaires, cette thèse propose de les évaluer dans des configurations turbulentes: une DNS de flamme prémélangée méthane/air de type Bunsen et une LES d’un brûleur expérimental. Les mécanismes sont analysés en termes de structure de flamme, paramètres de flamme globaux, longuer de flamme, prediction des concentrations en espèces majoritaires et des émissions polluantes. Une méthodologie pour évaluer a priori la capacité d’un mécanisme à prédire correctement des phénomènes chimiques tridimensionnels est proposée en se basant sur les résultats de flammes laminaires monodimensionnelles non étirées et étirées. Il ressort que, d’une part, pour construire un mécanisme réduit, il est nécessaire de faire un compromis entre coût calcul, robustesse et qualité des résultats. D’autre part, la qualité des résultats de DNS et LES de configurations tridimensionnelles turbulentes peut être anticipée par une analyse du comportement des schémas réduits dans des configurations simplifiées de flammes monodimensionnelles laminaires non étirées et étirées.A growing need for numerical simulations based on reliable chemistries has been observed in the last years in order to develop new technologies which could guarantee the reduction of the enviromental impact on air transport. The description of combustion requires the use of detailed kinetic mechanisms for most hydro-carbons. Their use in turbulent combustion simulation is still prohibitive because of their high computational cost. Reduced chemistries and tabulation methods have been proposed to over-come this problem. Since all these reductions have been developed for laminar configurations, this thesis proposes to evaluate their performances in simulations of turbulent configurations such as a DNS of a premixed Bunsen methane/air flame and a LES of an experimental PREC-CINSTA burner. The mechanisms are analysed in terms of flame structure, global burning parameters, flame length, prediction of major species concentrations and pollutant emissions. An a priori methodology based on one-dimensional unstrained and strained laminar flames to evaluate the mechanism capability to predict three-dimensional turbulent flame features is therefore proposed. On the one hand when building a new reduced scheme, its requirements should be fixed compromising the computational cost, the robustness of the chemical description and the desired quality of results. On the other hand, the quality of DNS or LES results in three-dimensional configurations could be anticipated testing the reduced mechanism on laminar one-dimensional premixed unstrained and strained flames

A validation strategy for LES subgrid scale models

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Validation of State-of-the-Art LES Modelling for Soot Prediction in Rich Premixed Turbulent Flames: a Focus on Oxidation Processes

International audienceThe availability of large eddy simulations (LES) models for the prediction of soot production in complex configurations is essential to the design of the new generation of combustion systems. This requires a good understanding of the processes leading to soot production and the development and validation of the corresponding models. This motivates the present calculations carried out for a laboratory scale burner (EM2Soot) designed at the EM2C laboratory to study soot production in turbulent swirled flames operating under fully-premixed rich conditions. The laser induced incandescence (LII) imaging data for the soot volume fraction (SVF) are used to test the validity of state-of-the-art numerical LES models for soot prediction. The retained models aim at achieving a good level of accuracy for a reasonable computational cost. The gaseous species kinetics is described with an analytically-reduced chemistry approach while the soot solid phase is computed using a three-equation model. This numerical strategy qualitatively reproduces the SVF in laminar premixed flames. In the considered turbulent burner, the numerical strategy captures the SVF spatial distribution but the predicted yield is notably overestimated with respect to the LII results. An extensive analysis of the flame structure as well as of the soot source terms indicates that this is due to an underestimation of soot oxidation reactions. A parametric study on rich laminar and turbulent flames is then carried out to examine the effect of soot oxidation model on the SVF prediction. This indicates that it is worth testing soot models in turbulent flame conditions to examine their capacities and reveal their shortcomings. It is also concluded that the EMSoot configuration offers an interesting situation for developing and validating soot oxidation models