Physical Insight and Modelling for Lewis Number Effects on Turbulent Heat and Mass Transport in Turbulent Premixed Flames

Abstract

The effects of global Lewis number on the behavior of Reynolds heat and mass fluxes in turbulent premixed flames are studied based on three-dimensional direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a number of statistically planar turbulent premixed flames with a global Lewis number ranging from Le = 0.34 to 1.2. For the same values of initial turbulent flow field parameters and duration of flame-turbulence interaction, it has been found that both Reynolds heat and mass fluxes may exhibit countergradient transport for flames with a Lewis number significantly smaller than unity; whereas predominantly gradient-type transport is obtained for flames with a Lewis number closer to unity. It is demonstrated that strong flame normal acceleration due to greater heat release in the low Lewis number flames acts to promote countergradient transport, and that the magnitude of the flame normal acceleration decreases with increasing Lewis number. Algebraic models for Reynolds heat and mass fluxes are proposed in which the effects of the Lewis number on flame normal acceleration are explicitly taken into account. The predictions of the new models are compared with DNS data, and the models are found to capture the influence of the Lewis number on turbulent scalar flux in a satisfactory manner for all the flames considered in this study.

The authors are grateful to Dr. Markus Klein for his help and several useful discussions. The financial assistance of EPSRC is also gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

For all cases τ = 4.5; β = 6.0; Pr = 0.7; and