Unsteady flamelet/progress variable approach for non-premixed turbulent lifted flames

Abstract

The unsteady flamelet/progress variable approach has been developed for the prediction of a lifted flame to capture the extinction and re-ignition physics. In this work inclusion of the time variant behavior in the flamelet generation embedded in the large eddy simulation technique, allows better understanding of partially premixed flame dynamics. In the process sufficient simulations to generate unsteady laminar flamelets are performed, which are a function of time. These flamelets are used for the generation of the look-up table and the flamelet library is produced. This library is used for the calculation of temperature and other species in the computational domain as the solution progresses. The library constitutes filtered quantities of all the scalars as a function of mean mixture fraction, mixture fraction variance and mean progress variable. Mixture fraction and progress variable distributions are assumed to be β-PDF and δ-PDF respectively. The technique used here is known as the unsteady flamelet progress variable (UFPV) approach. One of the well known lifted flames is considered for the present modeling which shows flame lift-off. The results are compared with the experimental data for the mixture fraction and temperature. Lift off height is predicted from the numerical calculations and compared with the experimentally given value. Comparisons show a reasonably good agreement and the UFPV combustion model appears to be a promising technique for the prediction of lifted and partially premixed flames.