TY - JOUR
T1 - Effects of non-unity Lewis number of gas-phase species in turbulent nonpremixed sooting flames
AU - Attili, Antonio
AU - Bisetti, Fabrizio
AU - Mueller, Michael E.
AU - Pitsch, Heinz
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge valuable support from KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory (KSL) in the form of assistance with code development and computational time on the IBM System Blue Gene/P “Shaheen” at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. H.P. acknowledges funding by Forschungsvereinigung Verbrennungsmotoren (FVV) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the DFG/FVV project PI 368/6-1 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Combustion Institute.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/4/1
Y1 - 2016/4/1
N2 - Turbulence statistics from two three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of planar n-heptane/air turbulent jets are compared to assess the effect of the gas-phase species diffusion model on flame dynamics and soot formation. The Reynolds number based on the initial jet width and velocity is around 15, 000, corresponding to a Taylor scale Reynolds number in the range 100 ≤ Reλ ≤ 150. In one simulation, multicomponent transport based on a mixture-averaged approach is employed, while in the other the gas-phase species Lewis numbers are set equal to unity. The statistics of temperature and major species obtained with the mixture-averaged formulation are very similar to those in the unity Lewis number case. In both cases, the statistics of temperature are captured with remarkable accuracy by a laminar flamelet model with unity Lewis numbers. On the contrary, a flamelet with a mixture-averaged diffusion model, which corresponds to the model used in the multi-component diffusion three-dimensional DNS, produces significant differences with respect to the DNS results. The total mass of soot precursors decreases by 20-30% with the unity Lewis number approximation, and their distribution is more homogeneous in space and time. Due to the non-linearity of the soot growth rate with respect to the precursors' concentration, the soot mass yield decreases by a factor of two. Being strongly affected by coagulation, soot number density is not altered significantly if the unity Lewis number model is used rather than the mixture-averaged diffusion. The dominant role of turbulent transport over differential diffusion effects is expected to become more pronounced for higher Reynolds numbers.
AB - Turbulence statistics from two three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of planar n-heptane/air turbulent jets are compared to assess the effect of the gas-phase species diffusion model on flame dynamics and soot formation. The Reynolds number based on the initial jet width and velocity is around 15, 000, corresponding to a Taylor scale Reynolds number in the range 100 ≤ Reλ ≤ 150. In one simulation, multicomponent transport based on a mixture-averaged approach is employed, while in the other the gas-phase species Lewis numbers are set equal to unity. The statistics of temperature and major species obtained with the mixture-averaged formulation are very similar to those in the unity Lewis number case. In both cases, the statistics of temperature are captured with remarkable accuracy by a laminar flamelet model with unity Lewis numbers. On the contrary, a flamelet with a mixture-averaged diffusion model, which corresponds to the model used in the multi-component diffusion three-dimensional DNS, produces significant differences with respect to the DNS results. The total mass of soot precursors decreases by 20-30% with the unity Lewis number approximation, and their distribution is more homogeneous in space and time. Due to the non-linearity of the soot growth rate with respect to the precursors' concentration, the soot mass yield decreases by a factor of two. Being strongly affected by coagulation, soot number density is not altered significantly if the unity Lewis number model is used rather than the mixture-averaged diffusion. The dominant role of turbulent transport over differential diffusion effects is expected to become more pronounced for higher Reynolds numbers.
KW - Differential diffusion
KW - Direct numerical simulations
KW - Lewis number effects
KW - Soot
KW - Turbulent flames
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U2 - 10.1016/j.combustflame.2016.01.018
DO - 10.1016/j.combustflame.2016.01.018
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84960095304
SN - 0010-2180
VL - 166
SP - 192
EP - 202
JO - Combustion and Flame
JF - Combustion and Flame
ER -