Tabulation-based sample-partitioning adaptive reduced chemistry and cell agglomeration

Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, vol. 40, pp. 105386

Abstract

In this study, we combine the SPARC (Sample-Partitioning Adaptive Reduced Chemistry) and the Cell Agglomeration (CA) techniques, to accelerate the simulation of laminar and turbulent reactive flows with detailed kinetics. The reduced mechanisms adopted by SPARC are generated on the basis of representative thermo-chemical states corresponding to laminar, steady-state flamelets parameterized by the mixture fraction and a progress variable, in line with the TRAC (Tabulated Reactions for Adaptive Chemistry) method, recently proposed by Surapaneni and Mira (Comb and Flame, 2023). To further speed-up the calculation, CA (consisting in grouping the cells having similar thermo-chemical states) is carried out before identifying the local reduced mechanism by means of SPARC. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, we considered two benchmark cases: (i) a laminar, pulsating laminar coflow diffusion flame fueled by a mixture of C2H4 and N2 burning in air; (ii) a 2D, turbulent, non-premixed flame burning n-C7H16 in air subject to decaying isotropic turbulence. In both cases, a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for the formation of PAHs and soot particles and aggregates was considered. The results are promising, showing both accuracy and computational efficiency. While this study uses non-premixed flamelets with mixture fraction and progress variable as an illustrative example, the proposed methodology has the potential to be applied to various combustion modes, including premixed and partially premixed scenarios.

Authors 5

1. Alberto Cuoci corresponding

   Politecnico di Milano

   Affiliation as printed

   CRECK Modeling Lab, Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

2. Andrea Nobili

   Politecnico di Milano

   Affiliation as printed

   CRECK Modeling Lab, Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

3. Alessandro Parente

   Université Libre de Bruxelles

   Affiliation as printed

   Université Libre de Bruxelles, Ecole Polytechnique de Bruxelles, Aero-Thermo-Mechanics Laboratory, Bruxelles, Belgium

   WEL Research Institute, 1300 Wavre, Belgium

4. Temistocle Grenga

   University of Southampton

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, UK

5. Heinz G. Pitsch Aachen Institute for Combustion Technology

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Combustion Technology, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany