arXiv subjects

Thorsten Zirwes

Publications and source records attributed to Thorsten Zirwes.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Large-eddy simulation of moderately dense evaporating sprays with particle-informed super-resolution

In large-eddy simulation (LES) of dense sprays or sprays with pronounced clustering, evaporation rates can be inaccurate when the mesh is too coarse to provide realistic boundary conditions for the widely employed single droplet evaporation model. This is especially relevant to liquid spray combustion in practical applications. Deep learning-based super-resolution (SR) has recently emerged as a promising method for LES subgrid-scale modeling, capable of enhancing flow field resolution. This technique appears well-suited to reconstruct the local gas fields within the inter-droplet space that can be used to correct the evaporation rates. However, it has not yet been applied for this purpose. This paper presents an innovative SR approach $-$ particle-informed super-resolution (PISR) $-$ that approximates high-resolution flow fields for improved evaporation computation. It is validated with a priori, a posteriori and generalization tests on moderately dense sprays. The results show that PISR-LES can closely replicate the evaporation rates computed in a carrier-phase direct numerical simulation (CP-DNS), significantly reducing the discrepancy in the fuel mass fraction field between LES and CP-DNS. Furthermore, the PISR model exhibits robust generalization to cases unseen in training when varying air temperature, droplet diameter, turbulent Reynolds number and spray pattern.

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arXiv2026

Effects of Soret diffusion on the intrinsic instability of premixed hydrogen/air flames

Hydrogen flames exhibit multiple intrinsic instabilities. The low molar masses of H and H2 lead to significant Soret diffusion near the flame front; however, its influence on hydrogen flame instabilities remains to be quantified. This study investigates the effect of Soret diffusion on instability evolution dynamics via one-dimensional counterflow analysis and two-dimensional, high-fidelity direct numerical simulations covering both the linear growth regime and the fully developed nonlinear regime over a wide range of equivalence ratios (phi). In the linear regime, Soret diffusion increases the perturbation growth rate at phi < 1.7, especially under lean conditions, but reduces the growth rate at phi > 1.7. A similar sensitivity reversal is observed in the Markstein length near the peak equivalence ratio of unstretched laminar flame speed. In the nonlinear regime, Soret diffusion accelerates the formation of small-scale wrinkles in lean hydrogen flames and reduces the characteristic size of large-scale finger structure by one-third. An interesting observation is that, although Soret diffusion promotes preferential diffusion and increases the local flame displacement speed, the global fuel consumption rate decreases due to a reduction in the overall flame surface area. In addition, curvature-based flame segment analysis reveals a synergistic effect between Soret diffusion and Fickian diffusion that enhances/reduces the local equivalence ratio in positively/negatively curved regions of the flame front. The probability distributions of the Karlovitz number and the density-weighted displacement speed are also analyzed; results suggest that, for lean hydrogen flames, Soret diffusion broadens the distributions for both parameters, particularly on the positive side. These findings promise to advance the fundamental understanding of hydrogen flame dynamics under complex differential transport.

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arXiv2026

Eigenvalue-based Linear Stability Analysis of Intrinsic Instabilities in Laminar Flames

Intrinsic instabilities of laminar premixed flames play an important role in the dynamics of hydrogen combustion and in the development of predictive models for reacting flows. However, determining their dispersion relations typically relies either on simplified analytical descriptions of the flame front or on computationally expensive direct numerical simulations (DNS). This work develops a generalized eigenvalue problem-based linear stability analysis (GEVP-LSA) framework that predicts the growth rates and spatial structure of intrinsic flame instabilities directly from the linearized governing equations of a 1D base flame. The approach is first validated using the classical Darrieus-Landau configuration, where the numerical results reproduce the analytical dispersion relation and eigenmode structure. The framework is then applied to a model flame of finite thickness governed by the reactive Navier-Stokes equations. The resulting dispersion relations and perturbation fields show excellent agreement with corresponding DNS results while reducing the computational effort by a factor of 1e8. The proposed method therefore provides an efficient and accurate tool for studying intrinsic flame instabilities and offers a scalable foundation for future stability analyses of more complex reacting-flow configurations relevant to combustion modeling and large-eddy simulations.

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arXiv2026

Effects of gravity on lean hydrogen/air flame instability: From linear scaling law to nonlinear morphology evolution

The instability characteristics of lean hydrogen/air flames have attracted considerable research attention, yet the effect of gravity remains insufficiently understood. In this study, time-resolved two-dimensional simulations with detailed chemistry and transport are conducted to investigate the influence of gravity-induced Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability on the linear growth rate of disturbances and nonlinear morphology evolution of cellular flame fronts at different length scales. In the linear regime, a parametric study is performed across various equivalence ratios, initial temperatures and pressures; in each case, the dispersion relation is calculated for various gravity levels. The influence of gravity is most pronounced under ultra-lean, low-temperature, and high-pressure conditions, and a universal scaling law between gravity sensitivity and the Froude number is established. In the nonlinear regime, gravity has opposite effects on the large-scale and small-scale structures of lean hydrogen flames. On the one hand, gravity inhibits the splitting of small-scale cellular structures through a baroclinic torque mechanism; on the other hand, it promotes the development of large-scale finger-like structures, thereby increasing the total surface area and the global consumption speed of the flame. The effects of gravity on the probability distributions of cell size, displacement speed, Karlovitz number, and local curvature are also analyzed. The results and findings of the present study should advance the fundamental understanding of hydrogen flame dynamics under varying gravity conditions and provide insight for relevant applications, including fire safety and space propulsion.

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arXiv2026

A convolutional autoencoder and neural ODE surrogate modeling framework applied to transient counterflow flames

A novel convolutional autoencoder and neural ODE (CAE-NODE) framework is proposed for a reduced-order model (ROM) applied to transient 2D counterflow flames, as an extension of AE-NODE methods in homogeneous reactive systems to spatially resolved flows. The multidimensional thermochemical fields (256 x 256 grid, 21 variables) obtained from direct numerical simulations (DNS) are used in training the CAE, where convolutional layers learned the underlying spatial correlations, allowing the CAE to construct an unsupervised 3D latent manifold that is physically meaningful, smooth, and continuous in time. This results in a compression ratio of over 400,000 times. The NODE then subsequently learns the continuous-time dynamics on the latent manifold, enabling the prediction of the full temporal evolution of the flames by integrating forward in time from an initial condition. The results demonstrate that the CAE-NODE can accurately capture the entire transient process, including ignition, flame propagation, and the gradual transition to a non-premixed condition, with excellent agreement with the DNS, while adhering to conservation principles at virtually no computational cost compared to the reference DNS. Predictions remain accurate at strain rates outside the training range. Moreover, despite being unsupervised, the learned latent manifold is highly correlated with the flame-state descriptors such as the progress variable, mixture fraction, and the scalar dissipation rate. This study, for the first time, highlights the potential of CAE-NODE for surrogate modeling of unsteady dynamics of multi-dimensional reacting flows.

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arXiv2025

Super-resolution of turbulent velocity fields in two-way coupled particle-laden flows

This paper introduces a deep learning-based super-resolution (SR) framework specifically developed for accurately reconstructing high-resolution velocity fields in two-way coupled particle-laden turbulent flows. Leveraging conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs), the generator network architecture incorporates explicit conditioning on physical parameters, such as effective particle mass density and subgrid kinetic energy, while the discriminator network is conditioned on low-resolution data as well as high-frequency content of the input data. High-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS) datasets, covering a range of particle Stokes numbers, particle mass loadings, and carrier gas turbulence regimes, including forced- and decaying-turbulence, serve as training and testing datasets. Extensive validation studies, including detailed analyses of energy spectra, probability density functions (PDFs), vorticity distributions, and wavelet-based decomposition demonstrate the model's accuracy and generalization capabilities across different particle parameters. The results show that the network utilizes particle data, mainly in the reconstruction of high-frequency details modulated by particles. Additionally, systematic assessment of the model's performance in capturing previously unseen flow regimes further validates its predictive capabilities.

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arXiv2023

Combined effects of heat loss and curvature on turbulent flame-wall interaction in a premixed dimethyl ether/air flame

This study investigates the effects of curvature on the local heat release rate and mixture fraction during turbulent flame-wall interaction of a lean dimethyl ether/air flame using a fully resolved simulation with a reduced skeletal chemical reaction mechanism and mixture-averaged transport. The region in which turbulent flame-wall interaction affects the flame is found to be restricted to a wall distance less than twice the laminar flame thickness. In regions without heat losses, heat release rate and curvature, as well as mixture fraction and curvature, are negatively correlated, which is in accordance with experimental findings. Flame-wall interaction alters the correlation between heat release rate and curvature. An inversion in the sign of the correlation from negative to positive is observed as the flame starts to experience heat losses to the wall. The correlation between mixture fraction and curvature, however, is unaffected by flame-wall interactions and remains negative. Similarly to experimental findings, the investigated turbulent side-wall quenching flame shows both head-on quenching and side-wall quenching-like behavior. The different quenching events are associated with different curvature values in the near-wall region. Furthermore, for medium heat loss, the correlations between heat release rate and curvature are sensitive to the quenching scenario.

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arXiv2022

Flame-vortex interaction during turbulent side-wall quenching and its implications for flamelet manifolds

In this study, the thermochemical state during turbulent flame-wall interaction of a stoichiometric methane-air flame is investigated using a fully resolved simulation with detailed chemistry. The turbulent side-wall quenching flame shows both head-on quenching and side-wall quenching-like behavior that significantly affects the CO formation in the near-wall region. The detailed insights from the simulation are used to evaluate a recently proposed flame (tip) vortex interaction mechanism identified from experiments on turbulent side-wall quenching. It describes the entrainment of burnt gases into the fresh gas mixture near the flame's quenching point. The flame behavior and thermochemical states observed in the simulation are similar to the phenomena observed in the experiments. A novel chemistry manifold is presented that accounts for both the effects of flame dilution due to exhaust gas recirculation in the flame vortex interaction area and enthalpy losses to the wall. The manifold is validated in an a-priori analysis using the simulation results as a reference. The incorporation of exhaust gas recirculation effects in the manifold leads to a significantly increased prediction accuracy in the near-wall regions of flame-vortex interactions.

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arXiv2022

Modelling the response of a turbulent jet flame to acoustic forcing in a linearized framework using an active flame approach

This study performs a linear analysis of a turbulent reacting methane-air jet flame, with the goal of predicting the response of the reacting flow to upstream acoustic actuation. Accounting for heat release fluctuations is a vital component when investigating thermoacoustic instabilities and flame noise in a linearized framework. Unlike previous studies this work develops and applies an active flame approach, meaning the heat release oscillations of the flame resulting from the acoustic fluctuations are taken into account. To yield an active flame approach in the linear framework, a combustion model needs to be linearized. It is demonstrated that linearizing Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) combustion models leads to closure problems, making their application in the linearized framework troublesome. Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) combustion models, however, prove to circumvent this problem, which makes them suitable candidates for this purpose. The RANS combustion models are linearized around the temporal mean flow of the turbulent jet flame, which is obtained by LES. An a priori analysis shows that a linearized RANS-Eddy Break Up (EBU) model is the best suited among all investigated combustion models for the investigated set-up and reproduces with high accuracy the fluctuations in reaction rate obtained in the LES. Furthermore, the linearized governing equations of the flow including the linearized EBU model for the reaction rate are solved for incoming acoustic perturbations. The response modes show that the reaction rate oscillations are caused by Kelvin-Helmholtz vortex rings, which perturb the jet flame. The results are in good agreement with the LES simulations in terms of the mode shapes of both reaction rate and velocity fluctuations.

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