Ignition Modeling for Present and Future Combustors and Augmentors

The ability to predict the ignitibility potential of a combustor at various operating conditions is not practical at this time due to the complexity of this process. Ignition within a gas turbine combustor is dependent on various parameters; including spark (or plasma) energy, flow conditions (turbulence levels), fuel/air ratio, and fuel spray density. All these parameters must be properly predicted in order to effectively model the ignition characteristics of a gas turbine combustor. To meet this need, Combustion Science & Engineering, Inc. and Princeton University propose to utilize existing, well-validated fundamental numerical models for ignition phenomenon and further develop and extend these models for use with commercial computational fluid dynamics codes used for design of gas turbine combustors. This model will account for the stochastic nature of ignition in a highly turbulent combustor burning aviation fuels. In order for this model to be useful in a design process, flow-field information from a CFD code will need to be generated and then passed to the ignition models. CSE will develop a plan to implement the ignition model via Application Program Interface (API) for commercial CFD codes.