LES-FGM modelling of non-premixed auto-igniting turbulent hydrogen flames including preferential diffusion

Abstract

Tabulated chemistry methods are a well-known strategy to efficiently store the flows thermochemical properties. In particular, the Flamelet-Generated Manifold (FGM) is a widely used technique that generates the database with a small number of control variables. In order to build such a manifold, these coordinates must be monotonic in space and time. However, the high diffusivity of hydrogen can prevent such requisite. To avoid the non-monotonicity of control variables (the progress variable, in particular), one practical workaround is to perform the tabulation on zero-dimensional (0D) reactors rather than on one-dimensional (1D) flamelets. Various works already implemented and tested such 0D-based manifold, but mainly in the context of spray engines, where most of the composition is lean and information past the flammability limit is not relevant. The present work aims at investigating, for the first time, the applicability of a tabulation based on homogeneous reactors to study auto-igniting turbulent hydrogen jets. It is shown that a combined use of homogeneous reactors at the lean side and an extrapolation with 1D flamelets on the richer side is required to capture both chemistry and diffusive effects accurately in pure hydrogen flames. Then, this manifold is coupled to Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) of three-dimensional turbulent mixing layers and evaluated against direct numerical simulation with detailed chemistry. Good agreement is found, in terms of both ignition delay and the following steady-state burning process. Further analyses are carried out on statistics and modelling. In particular, the sensitivity of the LES solution to filter width, turbulence-chemistry interaction and multidimensional flame effects is investigated to provide new relevant insights on modelling non-premixed auto-igniting turbulent hydrogen flames.