Flamelet model transport equation

In turbulent reactive flows, the chemical species and temperature fluctuate in time and space. As a result, any variable can be decomposed in its mean and fluctuation. In Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations, only the means of the variables are computed. Therefore, a method to obtain a turbulent database (containing the means of species, temperature, etc.) from the laminar data is needed. In this work, the mean variables are calculated by PDF-averaging their laminar values with an assumed shape PDF function. For details the reader is referred to Refs. [16, 17]. In the combustion model, transport equations for the mean and variances of the mixture fraction and the progress variable and the mean mass fraction of NO are solved. More details about this turbulent implementation of the flamelet combustion model can also be found in Ref. [20],... 

To represent the partially premixed turbulent combustion of a refinery gas in the heater, a combination of the flamelet formulations for premixed and nonpremixed combustion was used [16]. The standard k-e model was used for turbulent flow calculations. The effect of turbulence on the mixture fraction was accounted for by integrating a beta-PDF derived from the local mixture fraction and mixture fraction variance, which were in turn obtained by solving their respective transport equations. A relatively simple approach was used to compute radiant heat transfer—a diffusion model with a constant absorption coefficient (0.1 m i). 

For gaseous flames, the LES/FMDF can be implemented via two combustion models (1) a finite-rate, reduced-chemistry model for nonequilibrium flames and (2) a near-equilibrium model employing detailed kinetics. In (1), a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is solved together with the FMDF equation for all the scalars (mass fractions and enthalpy). Finite-rate chemistry effects are explicitly and exactly" included in this procedure since the chemistry is closed in the formulation. In (2). the LES/FMDF is employed in conjunction with the equilibrium fuel-oxidation model. This model is enacted via fiamelet simulations, which consider a laminar counterflow (opposed jet) flame configuration. At low strain rates, the flame is usually close to equilibrium. Thus, the thermochemical variables are determined completely by the mixture fraction variable. A fiamelet library is coupled with the LES/FMDF solver in which transport of the mixture fraction is considered. It is useful to emphasize here that the PDF of the mixture fraction is not assumed a priori (as done in almost all other flamelet-based models), but is calculated explicitly via the FMDF. The LES/FMDF/flamelet solver is computationally less expensive than that described in (1) thus, it can be used for more complex flow configurations. 

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