Numerical simulation of premixed H₂–air cellular tubular flames

Abstract

The detailed flame structure of laminar premixed cellular flames in the tubular domain is simulated in 2D using a fully-implicit primitive variable finite difference formulation that includes multicomponent transport and detailed chemical kinetics. Numerical results for H₂/air flames are presented and compared against spatially resolved experimental measurements of temperature and chemical species including atomic H and OH. The experimental results compare well for flame structure and cell number, despite the numerical model under-predicting the peak temperature by 200 K. Numerical experiments were performed to assess the ability for cellular tubular flames to impact experimental and numerical investigations of practical flames. The cellular flame structure is found to provide a highly sensitive geometry that is useful for validating diffusive transport modelling approximations. This capability is exemplified through the development of a simple and accurate approximation for thermal diffusion (i.e. the Soret effect) that is suitable for practical combustion codes.

Keywords:

• thermal-diffusive instability
• Soret effect
• tubular flame
• cellular flame

Acknowledgements

The work reported in this paper was performed at Vanderbilt University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant CBET-1134268].