Three-dimensional numerical simulations of canonical statistically-steady
statistically-planar turbulent flames have been used in an attempt to produce
distributed burning in lean methane and hydrogen flames. Dilatation across the
flame means that extremely large Karlovitz numbers are required; even at the
extreme levels of turbulence studied (up to a Karlovitz number of 8767)
distributed burning was only achieved in the hydrogen case. In this case,
turbulence was found to broaden the reaction zone visually by around an order
of magnitude, and thermodiffusive effects (typically present for lean hydrogen
flames) were not observed. In the preheat zone, the species compositions differ
considerably from those of one-dimensional flames based a number of different
transport models (mixture-averaged, unity Lewis number, and a turbulent eddy
viscosity model). The behaviour is a characteristic of turbulence dominating
non-unity Lewis number species transport, and the distinct limit is again
attributed to dilatation and its effect on the turbulence. Peak local reaction
rates are found to be lower in the distributed case than in the lower Karlovitz
cases but higher than in the laminar flame, which is attributed to effects that
arise from the modified fuel-temperature distribution that results from
turbulent mixing dominating low Lewis number thermodiffusive effects. Finally,
approaches to achieve distributed burning at realisable conditions are
discussed; factors that increase the likelihood of realising distributed
burning are higher pressure, lower equivalence ratio, higher Lewis number, and
lower reactant temperature
