Flame Ignition/Extinction Model for Static Stability Prediction

As maintaining a stable combustion process is a major challenge associated with augmentor design and operation, numerical simulations are necessary to understand the combustion process and develop control strategies. Thus, it is essential to have reliable reduced kinetic models that are capable of predicting transient combustion phenomena such as ignition and extinction under augmentor operating conditions. Combustion Science & Engineering, Inc. proposes to develop a robust reduced kinetic modeling strategy for aviation fuels that can be coupled with unsteady flow models such as LES to simulate static stability limits in augmentors. In this approach, the fuel molecule will decompose into CH2O and H2 that will be represented by a global reactions step, while a detailed reaction sub-set will be used for CH2O/H2/O2 scheme for accurate predictions of non-equilibrium phenomena such as ignition and extinction. Combustion Science & Engineering, Inc. has successfully used a similar approach to predict stability phenomenon in cavity flameholders under scramjet conditions. In the present work, various turbulence/mixing models will be evaluated and optimum set of models will be chosen to couple with reduced kinetic model for CFDC simulation to predict flame propagation and static stability limits (i.e., ignition and extinction) under augmentor operating conditions.