Large Eddy Simulation of Vortex Breakdown/flame Interaction: Related Articles
Large Eddy Simulation of Vortex Breakdown/flame Interaction: Related Articles
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PHYSICS OF FLUIDS 19, 075103 共2007兲
INTRODUCTION gases that provide heat to the fresh gases and can thereby
maintain the combustion at rather lean conditions.1,2,7,9 How-
Modern gas turbines 共GT兲 utilize lean premixed burners
ever, it adds an additional complexity since thermal expan-
in order to achieve low levels of NOx emissions.1,2 The
sion affects the breakdown, i.e., it increases the velocity of
flame is kept in the combustor by a relatively strong swirling
the backflow. For example, Selle et al.4 and Schneider et al.7
motion of the 共lean兲 fuel/air mixture. The lean, swirling mix-
ture is highly susceptible to perturbations both in terms of reported that the flame can suppress large-scale coherent
flow and flame unsteadiness as well as flame blowout.2 The structures appearing during vortex breakdown while Syred8
dynamics of the flame is the result of the interactions among reported an increase of the coherent structure frequency with
the fluctuations in fuel-air concentration, heat-release, mix- the fuel/air equivalence ratio. It is clearly a nonlinear two-
ture velocity, and pressure.3–5 The main difficulty lies in the way coupling since the swirling motion enhances the shear-
nonlinear behavior of several of the controlling phenomena layer instability and thereby increases the flame surface
and the interaction among them 共e.g., chemistry and turbu- area.6
lence兲. For example, turbulent mixing instabilities may lead Modeling and understanding the vortex breakdown and
to concentration and heat-release fluctuations. Such heat- its interaction with combustion is then a key issue in flame
release fluctuations form an acoustic source that may en- stabilization. The main difficulty is the unsteady behavior of
hance the fluctuations in equivalence ratio. Several authors5,6 this type of flow:7–10 Large structures, resulting from vortex
showed the importance of large-scale flow structures in the breakdown and the swirling shear layers, directly affect the
flame/flow interaction. This mechanism is of relevance for flame stabilization leading to heat-release fluctuations and
the GT combustors as large scales play an important role in possibly to combustion instabilities. An example of the large-
flame stabilization 共e.g., through vortex breakdown兲. scale unsteady motions arising during vortex breakdown is
Vortex breakdown is commonly utilized to anchor and the precessing vortex core 共PVC兲.8 Experimental7,9–12 and
stabilize flames.1,2,7 This vortex breakdown is the result of numerical4,13 works have reported that vortex breakdown
the swirling motion given to a jet. The critical level of swirl, might result in an off-axis precession of the central recircu-
for attaining the vortex breakdown, depends strongly on the lation zone. The recirculation zone undergoes a periodic ro-
burner geometry and on the radial distribution of the velocity tational and translational motion around the axis and the in-
field.8 At vortex breakdown, a low-pressure region appears
stantaneous flow field is far from being axisymmetric.
around the axis region close to the expansion. If the swirling
However, time averaging the flow also maintains the geo-
motion is strong enough, the longitudinal pressure gradient
metrical axisymmetry. If a flame is stabilized by the recircu-
induces an axial backflow and a stagnation point. In many
lation zone, the vitiated gases will be engulfed into the recir-
combustion systems, the axial backflow consists of hot burnt
culation zone and undergo similar precession.9 Consequently,
a兲 the PVC by itself can act as a source of excitation for the
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Present address:
HTAS, Lyngby, Denmark. Telephone: ⫹46 46 222 31 84. Fax: ⫹46 46 222 flame front and thereby become a source of thermoacoustic
47 17. Electronic mail: [email protected] fluctuations.
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075103-2 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
The issue is therefore to model and understand the inter- In LES, the averaging operation corresponds to a low
action between the flame and the vortex. It is necessary to pass spatial filtering and leads to the unclosed set of PDE
capture in time and analyze the 3D flame stabilization pro- presented above. The main role of the unclosed or subgrid
cess. Such an analysis is carried out in this paper using the scale 共SGS兲 terms is to account for the interaction between
large eddy simulation 共LES兲. First, we present the different the resolved and the unresolved scales. In the momentum
components of the computational model, i.e., LES and the equations, the SGS terms should account for the dissipative
combustion model. Second, a sensitivity analysis of the re- character of turbulence on the small 共unresolved兲 scales as
sults to numerical mesh density and inflow boundary condi- well as for the transfer of energy among the resolved and
tions is presented. The analysis will assess the influence of unresolved scales. Corresponding properties may be attrib-
imperfectly known quantities 共inflow conditions兲 and not re- uted to the SGS in the energy- and the species-transport
solved turbulent structures upon the result. Comparisons equations.
with experimental data are also performed in order to relate A computational grid can support only Fourier compo-
the present results to physics. Finally, we seek to analyze the nents that have longer wavelengths than the grid size. Thus,
large-scale turbulent/flame motions. Since these fluctuations a dependent variable represented on a grid together with a
are smoothed out by time averaging, we focus on different discrete approximation for the derivatives leads to an implicit
statistical quantities obtained through proper orthogonal de- filtering. If no explicit SGS terms are added, the numerical
composition 共POD兲 of the flow and density fields. Finally, scheme should account at least for the small-scale dissipa-
the POD analysis is used to derive a reduced model repre- tion. This is attained for any numerically stable scheme and
senting the large-scale flame motions. is referred as implicit LES 共ILES兲 and also monotonically
integrated LES 共MILES兲 in the literature.14–17 However, nu-
PREMIXED COMBUSTION MODELING FOR LES merical schemes that are too dissipative are highly inappro-
Governing equations and momentum priate for LES since in addition to dissipation on small
equations closure scales, they may also be dissipative on the larger resolved
scales. This effect can be avoided by choosing appropriate
The basic partial differential equations 共PDE兲 describing 共higher-order兲 discretizations; for instance, Grinstein and
the motion of a reacting fluid are the conservation of mo- Fureby14 advocate the use of FTC 共flux-corrected transport兲
mentum, mass, and energy. The system of equations has to schemes while Margolin et al.17 recommend high-order
be closed with an equation of state. Since several species are monotonicity preserving schemes. In the following, we use a
involved, one has to add one transport equation for each of fifth-order weighted essentially nonoscillatory 共WENO兲
the mixture species including respective sink/source terms. scheme18 that ensures numerical stability but does not affect
In addition, a turbulent flow is inherently unsteady and one
significantly the resolved scales 共i.e., low dissipation and dis-
seeks to describe the statistical properties of the dependent
persion characteristics兲.
variables by using a suitable averaging method. If the basic
equations are averaged 共independently of the averaging Modeling of premixed combustion
method兲, the equations can be written 14
Large eddy simulation has also been shown to be very
¯
+ ⵜ · 共¯ũ兲 = 0, 共1兲 suitable for handling unsteady coherent structures in
t combustors.4,13,19,20 However, there are several open issues
related to LES and there is only a limited theoretical foun-
¯ ũ dation for modeling the SGS terms related to combustion.
+ ⵜ · 共¯ũũ兲 = − ⵜP̄ + ⵜ · 共− uu + ¯ũũ + ⵜ ũ兲, 共2兲
t Incorporating combustion chemistry into LES involves find-
ing a suitable reaction mechanism and solving the filtered
¯ Ỹ i species and energy equations 共3兲 and 共4兲. Appropriate reac-
+ ⵜ · 共¯ũỸ i兲 = ⵜ · 共− uY i + ¯ũỸ i + Di ⵜ Ỹ i兲 +
¯ i, tion mechanisms, either detailed for simple fuels or reduced
t
for practical fuels, may involve tens of species and hundreds
共3兲 of reaction steps resulting in a large system of stiffly coupled
equations that remain to be solved. Another problem is that
¯ T̃ Eqs. 共3兲 and 共4兲 contain the filtered reaction rates, which are
+ ⵜ · 共¯ũT̃兲 = ⵜ · 共− uT + ¯ũT̃ + DT ⵜ T̃兲 +
¯ T , 共4兲
t highly nonlinear functions of temperature and species con-
centrations. The closure of Eqs. 共3兲 and 共4兲 is still an open
¯ = 冉 冊
P
RT
, 共5兲
issue and several alternatives have been proposed. Examples
of such approaches includes 共i兲 implicit LES,21 共ii兲 thickened
flame models 共TFM兲,22 共iii兲 linear eddy models 共LEM兲20
where u is the velocity vector, P is the pressure, T is the with embedded 1D grids, 共iv兲 flamelet models 共FM兲,19,23–27
temperature, is the density, is the viscosity, R is the and 共v兲 filtered density function 共FDF兲 models;28 see Ref. 14
specific ideal gas constant, Di is the diffusivity of species i, for further details.
Y i is the mass fraction of species i, and i is the reaction Based on experience and computing efficiency, we con-
term of species i. The bar denotes the averaging operation centrate on the FM class of models and consider a single
and the tilde the density weighted averaging. scalar: the so-called progress-variable 共c兲, which is used as
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075103-3 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
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075103-4 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
⌶ = MAX 冋冉 冊 册
⌫·
兩u⌬兩
SL
D−2
,1 , 共9兲
•
•
Propane/air equivalence ratio: 0.5.
Unburnt gas temperature: Tu = 573 K.
• Bulk velocity in the nozzle: U0 ⬃ 59 m / s.
where D is the fractal dimension and ⌫ is an efficiency func- • Reynolds number: Re⬃ 81000; Mach number: M ⬃ 0.12.
tion presented by Meneveau and Poinsot.31 The fractal di- • Blade angle: 50°.
mension needs to be modeled, and following Fureby,26 we • Swirl number downstream of the swirler 共as defined in
use Ref. 10兲: S = 1.05.
2.05 2.35
D= + . 共10兲 The experimental measurements are summarized in Ref.
1 + 兩u⌬兩/SL 1 + SL/兩u⌬兩
10. They include laser Doppler anemometry 共LDA兲 measure-
Further, several authors19,24–26 use a transport equation to ments and propane mass fraction and temperature measure-
compute the SGS turbulent kinetic energy and the subgrid ments using intrusive techniques.10 The present study fo-
velocity fluctuation. Another alternative is to estimate the cuses on the interaction between the flame and the PVC.
subgrid velocity fluctuation from the resolved velocity field. Therefore, we should present the fuel mass fraction as well
As pointed out by Colin et al.,22 the velocity fluctuation as temperature fields as progress variables that can be com-
should not include thermal expansion effects. They consider pared to the simulations.
the rotational part of the resolved velocity field only and
relate the subgrid fluctuation to the smallest resolved scales.
Consequently, the subgrid velocity vector fluctuation u⌬ is
given by
NUMERICAL METHODS
u⌬ = C2⌬3ⵜ2共ⵜ ⫻ ũ兲, 共11兲
LES code
where C2 is a constant. Colin et al.22 recommend taking
C2 ⬃ 2. The present flamelet formulation has been implemented
Finally, the local filtered density is computed from the in a Cartesian finite-difference LES code solving the low-
temperature using an ideal gas law in the following way: Mach number formulation of the Navier-Stokes
equations27,32 on staggered grids. The spatial derivatives are
T uT u uT u discretized with a fourth-order centered scheme except for
¯ = ⬇ ⬇ , 共12兲
T̃ T̃ Tu + 共Tb − Tu兲c̃ the convective terms that are treated with a fifth-order
WENO scheme.18 The time integration is done by a fully
where the subscripts u and b denote the unburnt and burnt implicit scheme using a second-order upwind finite-
states, respectively. difference approximation for the time derivatives. The com-
putational grid is made of a system of locally refined grids.32
LISBON SWIRLING COMBUSTOR The local refinements are added gradually in regions with
expected 共or computed兲 large gradients.32 The implicit solver
Geometry and available experimental data
uses a multigrid procedure for enhanced efficiency. The 1D
Figure 2 shows the swirl combustor located at the laminar flame speed and burnt/unburnt gas properties are
Lisbon Technical University.10 The swirler’s blade angle can computed using the software Cantera33 together with a pro-
be adjusted to fix the tangential/axial momentum ratio. The pane oxidation scheme.34
swirling annular jet enters a contraction and discharges into a The time step used is 1.5⫻ 10−6 s chosen such that the
premixing pipe of diameter 0.05 m. The pipe ends with a inlet Courant number is ⬃0.1. The mean values have been
converging/diverging nozzle. The minimum diameter within computed over 15000 to 25000 time steps corresponding to
the nozzle is D = 0.04 m and will be used as a characteristic ⬃4 flow-through times the whole computational domain.
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075103-5 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
POD analysis diameter 1.25D and length 4.14D discharging into a cylindri-
cal combustor of diameter 2.75D and length 8.4D. The pre-
Extracting information from the LES data is an essential
mixing pipe has a converging-diverging nozzle 共the diameter
issue for characterizing the turbulent flame and to enable one
at the contraction is 1D兲 before the sudden expansion. The
to understand the mechanisms controlling the specific prob-
flow enters the premixing pipe through an annulus of inner
lem. Traditionally, a turbulent flow is characterized by its
diameter 0.75D and outer diameter 1.25D. A conical bluff
mean and fluctuation 共rms兲 quantities, pointwise spectra, and
body is located inside the annulus. The length of the body
PDFs. An additional tool for data reduction that can be used
is ⬃0.6D. It is worth noting that the combustor is axisym-
to gain improved insight into the problem is proper orthogo-
metric but that the symmetry is not utilized in the LES com-
nal decomposition 共POD兲.35–38 The POD projects the turbu-
putations since we seek to capture spatially 3D turbulent
lent flow field on an orthonormal vector base that maximizes
structures.
the turbulent kinetic energy content for any subset of the
The combustion chamber is considered to operate in a
base. It allows an accurate description of the turbulence data
perfectly premixed mode. There are no available measure-
using only a limited number of modes.35 Given a vector Q
ments of the homogeneity of the fuel/air mixture, but since
containing the field variables and an orthonormal base ⌽, the
the fuel is injected far upstream of the flame, it is reasonable
expansion reads
to approximate the fuel/air mixture by an ideally mixed sys-
N tem. The propane/air equivalence ratio was 0.5. The fresh
Q共x,t兲 ⬇ Q 共x,t兲 = 兺 ai共t兲⌽i共x兲.
N
共13兲 gas temperature is 573 K and the outlet temperature about
i=0 1724 K. The Reynolds number based on the pipe diameter at
the contraction is Re⬃ 81 000. The swirl number down-
Note that the approximation QN of the turbulence data set Q stream of the guiding vanes was varied between S ⬃ 0.45 and
converges to Q when N goes to infinity and that i = 0 corre- 1.35. The global Karlowitz number14 is estimated to be
sponds to the averaged field. The base vectors are computed Ka⬃ 2 – 4 in the flame region. The flame lies in the so-called
so that they satisfy the eigenvalue problem,35,36 thin-reaction regime; see, e.g., Ref. 14. However, Duwig and
Fuchs27,30 showed that the present model can approximate
具Q共x,t兲 · QT共x,t兲典⌽共x兲 = ⌽共x兲, 共14兲
successfully a flame in the thin-reaction regime. In addition,
where the superscript T denotes the transposed of the vector the numerical results are compared with the available experi-
and 具.典 is the time-averaging operator. The eigenvalue i mental data to assess their accuracy.
characterizes the turbulent kinetic energy content of the
mode i. For practical reasons, Sirovich’s method of
snapshots36,37 is used to perform the POD. It consists of
transforming the problem into an equivalent eigenvalue
problem of much smaller size. In this paper, we used the 3D
data of the density field plus the three velocity components
and some 400 snapshots for performing the POD. It has been
found that increasing the number of snapshots beyond ⬃300
does not influence the first five POD modes significantly. The
extracted POD modes can be used further to derive dynami-
cal models based on ordinary differential equations 共ODEs兲
enabling capturing the flow/flame dynamics without solving
the full PDE system 共e.g., Ref. 39兲.
Computational geometry
The geometry, corresponding to a portion of the experi- FIG. 3. Systematic error due to time averaging for density variable flows.
mental rig presented in Fig. 2, contains a premixing pipe of Streamwise evolution of the L⬁ norm of SE along radii.
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075103-6 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 4. Grid sensitivity of the normalized mean axial velocity: radial profiles at x / D = 0.25, 0.5, 1.25, and 2.5.
Three computational grids have been used in the present Boundary conditions
work as presented in Table I. For the present flow, we esti-
The boundary conditions are essential for all computa-
mate the Taylor turbulent microscale to be Taylor ⬃ D / 50,
tional results and in particular for LES. Swirling flows in
which gives an idea for a suitable mesh spacing. However,
general are highly sensitive even to small variations in the
this global estimate does not assess on the grid influence
upon the results, which has to be done via a proper sensitiv- temporal or the spatial form of the inlet conditions; see, e.g.,
ity analysis. Three different grids, coarse, medium, and fine, Ref. 27. One may approximate the flow using a fully devel-
are used, with 1.6, 1.9, and 3.4 million computational cells, oped turbulent pipe flow or any other well defined 共mean兲
respectively. The coarse, medium, and fine grids have a mesh velocity profile and adding to that the 共artificially generated兲
size in the flame region of h ⬃ D / 40, h ⬃ D / 46, and instantaneous turbulent fluctuations. In fact, due to the un-
h ⬃ D / 52, respectively. All grids utilize the option of having certainty in experimental conditions, it is not very construc-
local refinements in order to have higher resolution in the tive to strive for the exact reconstruction of the experimental
premixing pipe and in the flame region while using a coarser conditions. Instead, it is more important to assess the sensi-
mesh further downstream. Thus, the mesh spacing close to tivity of the results to the uncertainty in the boundary condi-
the outlet of the domain is four times larger than in the flame tions. In the present study, we start the LES computation at
region. the beginning of the premixing tube. Steady inflow bound-
FIG. 5. Grid sensitivity of the normalized axial velocity fluctuation rms: radial profiles at x / D = 0.25, 0.5, 1.25, and 2.5.
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075103-7 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 6. Grid sensitivity of the Favre-averaged progress variable: radial profiles at x / D = 0.25, 0.5, 1.25, and 2.5.
aries are enforced and the corresponding mean profiles are pressure boundary conditions are needed since we use a stag-
obtained from a separate Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes gered grid formulation with boundaries located at the cell
共RANS兲 computation computed on an extended domain. The faces.32
use of a steady inflow boundary is supported by the fact that The different computational cases are summarized in
strong shear in the premixing pipe generates turbulence so Table I.
that the flow is strongly turbulent before it reaches the flame.
We assess the influence of the uncertainty related to the mod- RESULTS
eled inflow condition on the results. This is done by chang-
ing the inflow tangential velocity 共Utang兲 by ±10% keeping In the following, quantitative and qualitative results are
the axial velocity Uax 共i.e., the mass flow兲 constant. These presented. The quantitative results presented below are
cases are referred to as LES+ and LES−. normalized using the bulk velocity at the contraction
At the outlet, all variables are assumed to have a zero 共U0 = Ubulk = 59 m / s兲 and the pipe diameter at the contrac-
gradient with a correction 共if needed兲 to ensure global mass tion, i.e., D = 0.04 m. The vortex core has been visualized
conservation. Since the heat losses at the wall are not known, using a criterion based on the second largest eigenvalue of
solid adiabatic walls and nonslip conditions are imposed. the second invariant of the velocity derivative tensor pro-
The impact of the adiabatic walls is expected to be low since posed by Jeong and Hussain40 共the so-called 2 technique兲.
we investigate the flame stabilization in the central recircu- In the following figures, the vortex core corresponds to a
lation zone, which is far away from the wall. No explicit region where the eigenvalue is negative.
FIG. 7. Sensitivity of the normalized mean axial velocity to the inlet boundary condition: radial profiles at x / D = 0.225, 0.5, 1.125, and 3.625.
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075103-8 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 8. Sensitivity of the normalized axial velocity fluctuation rms to the inlet boundary condition: radial profiles at x / D = 0.225, 0.5, 1.125, and 3.625.
ing in the use of experimental data for comparison with nu- In the present case, we used the LES data to estimate the SE.
merical results lies in the averaging procedure. Turbulent Figure 3 shows the estimate for three quantities: mean axial
flow variables are meaningful only if statistical quantities velocity, rms of the axial velocity fluctuations 共both being
共usually mean or rms兲 are considered. The set of equations normalized by the bulk velocity U0兲, and the mean progress
共1兲–共5兲 resolves density weighted filtered fields that lead to variable. SE is zero in most of the domain since the flame
Favre-averaged/filtered quantities after time averaging. How- region is relatively confined 共0 ⬍ x / D ⬍ 2兲. SE reaches a
ever, experimental data have been obtained by a different peak at x / D ⬃ 0.5 corresponding to the location of large den-
averaging technique. sity fluctuations. SE might be up to ±0.18 for c and
The uncertainty resulting from the time-averaging proce- ±0.10 U0, ± / −0.04 U0 for the mean axial velocity and its
dure should be estimated if the flows are subject to high- fluctuation, respectively.
density gradients. Denoting the time or the ensemble averag- Another estimate of the uncertainty is carried out by
ing operation by 具.典, the systematic error 共SE兲 on a variable Q computing the mass flux from the LDA data. This procedure
is estimated as is only applicable when density is constant along the radius.
FIG. 9. Comparisons with experimental data 共LDA兲 共Ref. 10兲: normalized mean axial velocity radial profiles at x / D = 0.0, 0.225, 1.125, and 3.625.
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075103-9 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 10. Comparisons with experimental data 共LDA兲 共Ref. 10兲: normalized mean radial velocity radial profiles at x / D = 0.0, 0.225, 1.125, and 3.625.
In the present case, temperature measurements indicate that size. Figure 5 shows the axial velocity fluctuation rms along
it is restricted to the region x / D ⬎ ⬃ 2. For instance, at the the same lines. Again the discrepancies due to the grids are
location x / D = 3.625, the mass flow computed from the LDA small. The situation is similar also for the more sensitive
data is about 15% lower than the one reported in the original Favre-averaged progress variable along radial lines, as
paper.10 shown in Fig. 6. The difference between the predictions is
marginal, except at the location x / D ⬃ 0.5. At the centerline,
Sensitivity analysis the fine grid prediction departs strongly from the others. It
LES resolves only turbulent scales that are larger than predicts a thinner flame brush so that c reaches ⬃0.8 at the
grid spacing. Hence it is essential to assess the effect of this centerline while it reaches only ⬃0.3 in the other cases.
incomplete resolution not only by using high-order numeri- However, the overall influence of the computational grid was
cal schemes and estimating the resolved scale size, but also found to be low and all three grids predict a very similar flow
by grid-sensitivity study. For the class of problems consid- pattern 共vortex breakdown and central recirculation zone兲
ered in this study, it is difficult to make large grid variations and turbulence levels. Consequently, the coarsest grid can be
and the focus has been on changing the swirling jet resolu- used to conduct sensitivity analysis of different parameters
tion. Figure 4 shows the mean axial velocity radial profiles in since the sensitivity to parameters is not expected to be
the combustor. The differences between the three grids are higher with the finest grid.
not significant and all three computations predict the same The sensitivity to the axial/tangential momentum ratio
central recirculation zone both in terms of magnitude and imposed at the computational inlet has been assessed. Fig-
FIG. 11. Comparisons with experimental data 共LDA兲 共Ref. 10兲: normalized axial velocity fluctuation rms radial profiles at x / D = 0.0, 0.225, 1.125, and 3.625.
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075103-10 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 12. Comparisons with experimental data 共LDA兲 共Ref. 10兲: normalized radial velocity fluctuation rms radial profiles at x / D = 0.0, 0.225, 1.125, and 3.625.
ures 7 and 8 depict the mean axial velocity and rms of the Comparisons with experimental data: Case S = 1.05
axial velocity fluctuations along radial lines in the combustor
LDA data9 are used for comparison with the present LES
for the different inflow conditions. The effect of variations in
data. Figures 9 and 10 depict mean axial and radial velocity
the inflow tangential velocity 共i.e., swirl兲 is found mainly in
profiles at several axial locations. The overall agreement be-
the rms values and mostly near the inlet. In addition, the
tween the LES results and the LDA data is good and both
sensitivity of the mean progress variable field to the inflow
boundary 共not presented here兲 was not found to be signifi- data sets describe the same flow patterns. The agreement
cant. This behavior is expected since the increase in shear close to the expansion 共x / D ⬍ 0.5兲 is below experimental
increases turbulence production near the inlet, which mani- uncertainty, showing that the LES captures the central recir-
fests in higher rms levels in the swirling jet shear layer. The culation zone as well as the weak outer recirculation accu-
effect of the inlet conditions reduces further downstream as rately. Further downstream 共locations x / D ⬃ 1.125 and
the local generation of turbulence dominates and the contri- 3.625兲, the LES seems to underestimate the back flow and
bution of turbulent transport reduces. Thus, by placing the exhibits somewhat smaller spreading of the swirling jet.
inflow boundary condition at more than four diameters up- However, the uncertainty of the velocity measurements in
stream of the expansion, the uncertainty in the inlet condi- this region 共estimated previously to be ⬃15%兲 suggests that
tions is shown to have a minor effect on the results. the discrepancy is less significant. Figures 11 and 12 show
FIG. 13. Comparisons with experimental data: progress variable radial profiles at x / D = 0.0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, and 1.5. The experimental profiles are extracted
from temperature 共circle兲 and from the fuel mass fraction Xf 共triangle兲 共Ref. 10兲.
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075103-11 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 15. Visualizations of the vortex core as 2 isolevel 共Ref. 40兲 共solid
gray surface兲 together with the flame surface 共isolevel c = 0.5/transparent
surface兲.
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075103-12 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 17. Effect of swirl on the normalized mean axial velocity: radial profiles at x / D = −3.6, −2, 0, and 1.
core. The vortex core is aligned with the centerline in the upstream. Since the flame does not penetrate the premixing
premixing tube but undergoes a strong off-axis rotation close tube 共it starts at x / D ⬃ 0.25兲, the initiation of the PVC is not
to the expansion where vortex breakdown occurs. This mo- affected by thermal expansion. Further characterization of
tion is referred to as PVC and includes a strong precession of the PVC is performed below using POD. Figure 16 also in-
the central recirculation zone. The recirculation zone con- dicates the presence of a smaller peak at St⬃ 0.4.
taining burnt gases is not located instantaneously on the axis
and therefore the flame is not allowed to propagate upstream. Swirl number modulation
It is worth noting that the averaged field offers a poor de-
scription of the PVC and therefore RANS-based techniques The PVC plays an essential role in terms of flame sta-
fail to predict this type of feature. Figure 16 shows a power bility. Hence it is important to study the sensitivity of the
density spectrum sampled in the PVC region. The spectrum PVC and flame stabilization to the value of the swirl number.
exhibits a typical −5 / 3 slope and a well defined peak at the Two additional flow cases with different values of swirl num-
Strouhal number St= f · D / U0 ⬃ 0.6. The corresponding fre- bers have been computed. These cases are referred to as the
quency f ⬃ 880 Hz is in good agreement with the LDA low and the high swirl cases, corresponding to swirl numbers
measurements10 f ⬃ 800 Hz and well in line with PVC fre- of ⬃0.45 and ⬃1.35 共compared to S = 1.05 for the base case兲,
quencies that are reported in the literature, e.g., Ref. 4. respectively. Figures 17 and 18 show the averaged radial
Note that unlike previous studies,7,9,13 we 共as well as and tangential velocity profiles both in the premixing tube
Ref. 10兲 do not witness a strong effect of combustion on the 共x / D ⬍ 0兲 and in the combustor 共x / D ⬎ 0兲. Close to the com-
PVC in this particular configuration. The reason is that the putational inlet 共x / D ⬃ −3.6兲, the differences are small for
PVC initiates upstream from the expansion as pointed out by the three cases. The tangential velocity scales with the swirl
Syred.9 As a consequence, the rms of the velocity fluctua- number. At x / D ⬃ 2, the high swirl and base cases are very
tions 共Figs. 11 and 12兲 shows large values at x / D ⬃ 0 and similar and the profiles match. The axial flow is distributed
FIG. 18. Effect of swirl on the normalized mean tangential velocity: radial profiles at x / D = −3.6, −2, 0, and 1.
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075103-13 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 19. Effect of swirl on the Favre-averaged progress variable: radial profiles at x / D = 0.25, 0.5, 1, and 2.
toward the large radius with a low-velocity region at the axis. at x / D ⬃ 0.5 where the progress variable at the centerline
The low swirl case is still characterized by lower tangential increases with swirl. The low swirl case resembles a short jet
velocity and the axial mass flow is distributed relatively uni- flame due to the swirling motion and the low-velocity region
formly along the radius. Further downstream, vortex break- along the axis. Visualization of the instantaneous flame front
down occurs in the high swirl and base cases as described in and vortex core is presented in Fig. 20 共the low swirl case兲.
the preceding section. The low swirl case exhibits instead a
straight-jet-like behavior with a small low- 共but positive兲 ve-
locity region around the axis. Figure 19 shows the progress
variable profiles along lines in the combustor. The high swirl
and base cases are again similar with a noticeable difference
FIG. 20. Visualizations of the vortex core and flame surface in the low swirl
case: Top: flame surface 共isolevel c = 0.6兲. Bottom: 2 isolevel 共Ref. 40兲 FIG. 21. Power density spectra of the turbulent kinetic energy vs Strouhal
共solid gray surface兲 together with the flame surface 共isolevel number at the location 共x / D = 0.25, r / D = 0.5兲. Bottom: high-swirl case. Top:
c = 0.5/transparent surface兲. low-swirl case.
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075103-14 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
0 0.80048 0.00000
1 0.01470 0.07369
2 0.01454 0.14655
3 0.00576 0.17541
4 0.00529 0.20190
5 0.00404 0.22216
6 0.00377 0.24104
7 0.00367 0.25945
8 0.00346 0.27678
9 0.00340 0.29383
10 0.00319 0.30980
11 0.00317 0.32568
12 0.00305 0.34098
13 0.00294 0.35571
14 0.00286 0.37005
15 0.00265 0.38333
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075103-15 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 23. Vector plots of the modes 1 共top兲 and 2 共bottom兲: longitudinal cut
at a symmetry plane.
冉 冊
lation bubble take a spiral form. Note that the recirculation
x t · U0 zone stabilizes the flame; a similar dynamics for the flame
共x, ,t兲 = 1 k · +m·−· , 共16兲
D D front is expected.
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075103-16 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 25. Fourier analysis of the POD time coefficients ai共t兲. Top: power
density spectra 共PDS兲 vs St for mode 1. Center: power density spectra vs St
for mode 2. Bottom: temporal phase angle between modes 1 and 2 vs St.
冋 册
phase angle during one cycle. Visualization of the central recirculation zone
¯ 共isolevel U / U0 = −0.1兲.
Q共x,t兲 = , 共17兲
· ⵜu
N
where the parameter 共with units of seconds兲 is introduced · ⵜu共x,t兲 ⬇ 共 · ⵜu兲 共x,t兲 = 兺 ai共t兲⌽i·ⵜu共x兲.
N
共19兲
such that Q will be expressed in units of kg/ m3. Practically, i=1
we choose so that the terms of the Q vector will be of the
same order of magnitude: here = D / U0. Figure 27 shows the contribution of each mode to the
We apply the POD on Q in order to get the POD vectors overall density fluctuation. Modes 1 and 2 clearly dominate
for the variables in 共17兲, over the others and have almost the same contributions
⬃8%. Mode 3 contributes some ⬃3% while modes 4 and 5
N have the same contribution of about 2%. The five first modes
¯共x,t兲 ⬇ ¯N共x,t兲 = 兺 ai共t兲⌽i共x兲, 共18兲 together represent only ⬃23% of the total density fluctua-
i=1 tion. Consequently, the higher modes have a global contribu-
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075103-17 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
FIG. 27. Contribution to the density fluctuation for each of the POD modes.
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075103-18 C. Duwig and L. Fuchs Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
da1 da2
c1 · = − a1b1,1 − a2b2,1, c2 ·
dt dt
= − a1b1,2 − a2b2,2 . 共21兲
a1共t兲 = A exp − ␣ 冉 冊冋 冉 t
t
· sin + B
冊册 , 共22兲
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075103-19 LES of a swirling flame Phys. Fluids 19, 075103 共2007兲
1
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stabilizes further downstream within the averaged central re- highly turbulent swirling flow in a model combustor,” Exp. Fluids 40, 177
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13
of the flame and does not affect the precessing frequency S. Roux, G. Lartigue, T. Poinsot, U. Meier, and C. Bérat, “Studies of mean
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17
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS H. G. Weller, G. Tabor, A. D. Gosman, and C. Fureby, “Application of a
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swering many questions about the Lisbon burner. The au- C. Fureby, “A fractal flame-wrinkling large eddy simulation model for
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