3.1. Non-premixed combustion simulation
The case under consideration is Sandia Flame D, an ideal experimental benchmark for non-premixed combustion, broadly utilised for model verification in past studies due to the large set of experimental data available. Experimentally, this jet flame has been studied on a piloted burner at Sydney University [
33] by Barlow [
34] who measured the temperature and species field, and Schneider [
27] who provided LDV velocity details. The burner has an inner nozzle with a diameter D = 7.2 mm, where a mixture of 25% methane and 75% air by volume is injected at different bulk velocities 49.5m/s, resulting in Re = 22400. The pilot nozzle expands to a diameter of 18.2mm, coaxial to the main jet. From it exits a lean (Φ = 0.77, T = 1880K) mixture of C
2H
2, H
2, air, CO
2, and N
2. Surrounding the pilot nozzle air streams at a velocity of 0.9m/s. The burner exit is positioned approximately 15 cm above the exit of the vertical wind tunnel [
34]
The details of modelling parameters are exhibited in
Table 1, along with comparisons with previous studies. According to it, the radial domain widely chosen ranged from 8 to 40D in the radial direction, while the axial part from 35 to 150D. In our work, the domain extends 70D in axial directions. Previous studies [
35,
36] suggest that clapping the grids to 50D does not affect the results, and in the radial direction it has an increase from 15 to 30D to capture the downstream flame/temperature expansion. The mesh is aligned with polar coordinates, but in the centre, a square section (or o-grid) is applied to avoid very fine meshes in the centreline. Two resolutions are employed under the Pope criterion [
37]: a fine grid of 71 points in the tangential direction, 48 points in the azimuthal direction and 210 points in the axial direction, with an o-grid area of 12×12; a coarse one, which is approximately downscaled with a factor of 1.5 in each direction (52, 36, 139), with an o-grid zone of 9×9. Both grids stretch along the axial and tangential directions to handle the inlet variance and the strong gradients in shear layers. The sketch of simulation domain and grid allocation is depicted in
Figure 1.
Snapshots of the simulated instantaneous fully-developed fields are shown in
Figure 2. From the temperature and CO
2 distribution, the predicted flame structure displays the conventional characteristics of non-premixed combustion [
2] as expected: a preliminary area close to the inlet nozzle where flames are thin and a subsequent zone beside which hot products fill the majority of the downstream realm.
Statistical collection is performed over 16 burner flow-through times based on the jet bulk velocity. In addition, 10 flow-through times are initially computed to guarantee the flows fully developed. To compare, published Flame D predictions by [
43] in
Table 1 are imported in the following result plots. The main reason is that it adopts the same 4-step chemistry mechanism and uses the sophisticated Eulerian stochastic field method for combustion modelling. This will allow us to evaluate the performance of the series method against a well-established and reliable model avoiding complexities associated with the chemical mechanism. The results (fine-grid set) presented are carried with a similar resolution to the fine mesh employed in this study.
Figure 3 displays the mean and root-mean-square (RMS) trends of mixture fraction, temperature, axial velocity and species along the centreline, and
Figure 4 show the radial distributions. The mixture fraction is defined following Bilger [
34]. Along the centreline, the series model shows good prediction with mixture fraction experimental data in the fine grid, with slight over-prediction from z/D=10 to 40, illustrating that the flame shape is replicated reasonably. For the coarse resolution, the result shows a reasonable trend, but diverges off the fine grid prediction from z/D = 15. This is largely due to the grid insufficiency of the coarse mesh in the downstream part. However, the situation is opposite in the reference case [
43], where over-prediction is observed in the immediate vicinity of the inlet. The authors attributed it for the limited grid resolution of the mixing layers evolving between the jet and pilot close to the nozzle. Switching to the radial distributions in
Figure 4, the mixture fraction profiles are well reproduced by the series model, although small over-predictions of the peak values are found at z/D =30 and 45 in the coarse grid simulation. It is consistent with the centreline observations. The results from the stochastic fields method [
37] are comparable in terms of accuracy with the series results although some under-prediction in the inner (fuel-rich side) regions at z/D =7.5 and 15 is noticed, which is not observed in the series model.
The axial profile of mean and RMS temperature is also displayed in
Figure 3. Along the centreline, the mean temperature, the flame location accordingly, is well reproduced for the series model, and the fine grid prediction behaves better than the coarse one as expected. The temperature RMS keeps the same level as the experimental data, although small over-prediction appears in the upstream locations before z/D =25. This evidences that the temperature fluctuation is sufficiently resolved by the series model with a simplified chemical mechanism. Besides, the RMS trend duplicates the observations in the experiments that the minimum arises around the location of the maximum mean profile. For the radial profiles in
Figure 4, the statistical distributions agree well with the experiments, albeit with slight over-predictions of the mean values at z/D =15 and 30. The over-predictions are also spotted in the reference case [
43] and the discrepancies may originate from the thermal radiation that is not considered in both LES simulations. Besides, it should be noticed that the series model performs relatively better than the PDF method [
43] at predicting the location of the mean peak at the near-nozzle positions z/D=7.5 and 15. This is related to the under-prediction of mixture fraction profiles in the stochastic field simulation[
43]. The centreline distribution of velocities is displayed in
Figure 3 as well. Clearly, those quantities are decently reproduced by the series model, in spite of some acceleration after 15D in the coarse grid simulation. For the stochastic field model [
43], it predicts a relatively better trend.
Figure 3 also exhibits the axial profiles of reactive species. Observing the series model results, the reactants CH
4 and O
2 tend to consume faster than the experimental data, consistent with the slightly over-predicted temperature trend. The predictions of CO
2 and H
2O agree well with the measurements, though coarse grid results are less accurate. Nevertheless, the prediction of CO and H
2 is significantly over-predicted. The discrepancies as well as the accelerated CH
4 decay rate are like those observed in the simulation [
43] and it can be attributed to the limitations of the simplified mechanism [
42]. The findings[
43,
59] suggest that the C1 scheme in the mechanism[
42] gives rise to an over-prediction of reaction rates on the fuel-rich side of the non-premixed flames. It is evidenced in the radial distribution of CH
4 in
Figure 4. Besides, the reduced reaction mechanism suffers from the shortcomings of predicting intermediates like H
2 and CO as it is susceptible to diffusive transport [
42]. This accounts for the inferior distributions of the same intermediate species in
Figure 3. In spite, good radial agreement is achieved for both the series model and stochastic fields method [
43], regarding the mean and RMS of CO
2 and H
2O. The peak locations near the nozzle exit are slightly under-predicted in the reference case [
43], owing to the same reason of the temperature distribution.
Overall, both the mean and RMS behaviours of the non-premixed flame are well captured by the series model. Improvements are obtained with grid refinement, especially in terms of reproducing the temperature, mixture fraction and major species distributions. In contrast to the stochastic field approach using the same mechanism [
43], the series model demonstrates comparatively good prediction in general, and even better at some occasions: like correctly capturing the radial distributions of mixture fractions and the peak locations of mean temperature and chemical species. This gives the series model a advantage to some extent since its formulation is simpler, the cost cheaper, and can be incorporated directly to the species transported equation.
3.2. Premixed combustion simulation
In this section, the methane/air turbulent Bunsen flame F3 experimented by Chen [
26] is chosen. The configuration is a typical turbulent premixed flame with a wide range of available velocity, temperature and species experimental data provided in [
25], and has been extensively applied for model validation in the combustion community. The burner has an inner nozzle with a diameter H = 12 mm, from which a stoichiometric mixture of methane and air is injected at different bulk velocities 30 m/s, leading to Re = 23,000. Surrounding the main fuel injection, a laminar stream (the burning products of stoichiometric methane and air) is piloted via a perforated plate for stabilising the turbulent flame [
60], and the outer diameter is 68mm. Outward, the fresh air is entrained as a form of a low-velocity co-flow. In the diagram of the premixed regimes, the F3 flame lies in the thin reaction zone, more precisely near the flamelet regime.
Simulation details are presented in
Table 2, along with the comparison with previous research. The simulated domain extends 30H downstream the nozzle, and 12H in the radial direction so as to capture the downstream flame/temperature expansion. As
Table 2 summarises, the chosen domain is sufficient for the flame propagation. The grid used is aligned with polar coordinates, but in the centre, a square section (o-grid) is applied to avoid very fine meshes in the centreline as in Sandia Flame D. Two resolutions are employed following the Pope criterion [
37]: a fine grid of 69 points in the tangential direction, 48 points in the azimuthal direction and 200 nodes in the axial direction; and a coarse one, which is approximately downscaled with a factor of 1.5 in each direction (49, 36, 134). Grids are stretched along the axial and tangential directions to seize the strong gradients stemming close to the nozzle and shear layers. The sketch of simulation domain and grid allocation is detailed in
Figure 5.
On the inlet boundary, velocity is prescribed with the detailed flow field experimental data [
26] above the nozzle exit. The inlet turbulence intensities are imposed using the same approach as the Sandia D flame. For the main jet species, flat profiles are specified using the measurements[
26]. The composition of the pilot stream is following [
60]. The pilot temperature is presumed as 1785K [
60,
73,
74], corresponding to 20% heat loss. Free slip is used for the lateral boundary, while a non-reflecting outflow condition is used on the outflow plane. The numerical schemes, the time set-up and the chemistry mechanism are the same as in Sandia Flame D simulations.
Statistical collection is performed over 15 burner flow-through times based on the jet bulk velocity. Before it, 8 flow-through times are computed to guarantee the flows fully developed. As a comparison, a set of F3 flame predictions published by [
22] in
Table 2 are selected, since it adopts a similar mathematical approach based on Taylor series expansion on the scalar field to determine the F factor in the ATF model. The augmented reduced version of GRI 3.0 schemes is introduced to denote chemistry. Besides, the mesh resolution is higher than the fine grid in this work.
The radial profiles of mean temperature and reactive species at different streamwise locations are first depicted in
Figure 6. In overall, the mean temperature is over-produced, especially near the nozzle. However, different researchers [
60,
64,
66,
67,
69,
75] reported the similar discrepancies related to experimental measurements (largely extending 10–25 % experimental uncertainties) using either reduced or detailed mechanisms. This discrepancy is largely due to the uncertainties of temperature fields in the pilot stream, where a large and unidentified portion (not reported in experiments [
26]) of heat is lost to the burner exteriors [
64,
67]. Past studies in
Table 2 indicate that the loss proportion varies between 0[
64,
65] and 34%[
60,
70]. On the other hand, the simulation domain starts just downstream the nozzle exit for computational cost reduction, and wall heat transfer is not considered.
The radial trends of species mass fraction are displayed in
Figure 6. The profiles of CH4 and O2 are reasonably replicated; In spite of some minor under-predictions on the fuel-lean sides (r/H>0.5), the calculated reactants meet the measurements well at the fuel-rich side and keep the descending trend from upstream to downstream. This indicates that the consummation rates of CH
4 and O
2 are well reproduced along the centreline. On contrast, the reference results [
22] are under-predicted on both the fuel-lean and fuel-rich sites.
The radial distributions of CO
2 and H
2O by the series model are in a reasonably decent consistence with experimental observations, despite of some under-predictions at z/H = 6.5. Meanwhile, improvements are obvious with the increase of grid resolutions. Compared with the reference case [
22], the series model performs better on the fuel-rich sides. It is related with the situation that the profiles of the reactants CH
4 and O
2 are not well resolved in these areas [
22]. Note that in ATF models, although the thickened flames are solved, the species transport equation is modified, the interaction between combustion and turbulence is transformed from a transport-dominant combustion regime to a chemistry-dominant one, and the impact of the heat release upon the flow field is not represented sufficiently. In contrast, the series model operates on the reaction rate term directly, without altering the formation of species balance equations. In terms of CO, the series model also obtains a good prediction, while the profiles are slightly under-predicted in the reference case[
22]. On the other hand, the computed CO products are less sensitive to grid resolutions than major species, as less difference is found with grid refinement. The measurement error of major species varies from 8% to 15% and that of intermediate species reaches 25% [
26]. The major and intermediate species predicted by the series model principally cater to the accuracy in both grid resolutions.
To further inspect the impact of the temperature discrepancies, a new progress variable is established by the definition of a linear combination of species concentration [
76]:
The radial distribution is depicted in
Figure 7 and compared with experimental measurements. In this regard, the progress variable based on species demonstrates a reasonable and much better agreement than the temperature profile. The trend is refined even in the vicinity of the nozzle exit, where substantial discrepancies in the mean temperature are detected.
Usually in non-premixed combustion where the flame is thick, one would eventually start resolving it as the mesh is refined. However, in premixed combustion, the reaction zones are very thin and they would always remain under the grid size in LES. In general, with the refinement of grid resolution, the series model improves at predicting the premixed Bunsen flame. Comparing the series model with the simulations of [
22], which adopted a similar series approach to determine the F factor of the artificially thickened flame model, the predictions are as good, if not better. Considering that the reference simulation[
22] employs a finer mesh and also more detailed chemistry, the series model shows the potential improvement if finer meshes are used or/and more detailed chemistry.