The ignition characteristics of a premixed bluff-body burner under lean conditions were investigated experimentally and numerically with a physical model focusing on ignition probability. Visualisation of the flame with a 5 kHz OH* chemiluminescence camera confirmed that successful ignitions were those associated with the movement of the kernel upstream, consistent with previous work on non-premixed systems. Performing many separate ignition trials at the same spark position and flow conditions resulted in a quantification of the ignition probability P ign , which was found to decrease with increasing distance downstream of the bluff body and a decrease in equivalence ratio. Flows corresponding to flames close to the blow-off limit could not be ignited, although such flames were stable if reached from a richer already ignited condition. A detailed comparison with the local Karlovitz number and the mean velocity showed that regions of high P ign are associated with low Ka and negative bulk velocity (i.e. towards the bluff body), although a direct correlation was not possible. A modelling effort that takes convection and localised flame quenching into account by tracking stochastic virtual flame particles, previously validated for non-premixed and spray ignition, was used to estimate the ignition probability. The applicability of this approach to premixed flows was first evaluated by investigating the model's flame propagation mechanism in a uniform turbulence field, which showed that the model reproduces the bending behaviour of the S T -versus-u curve. Then ignition simulations of the bluff-body burner were carried out. The ignition probability map was computed and it was found that the model reproduces all main trends found in the experimental study.

The recent classification of the onset of turbulence as a directed percolation (DP) phase transition has been applied to all major shear flows including pipe, channel, Couette and boundary layer flows. A cornerstone of the DP analogy is the memoryless (Markov) property of turbulent sites. We here show that for the classic case of channel flow, the growth of turbulent stripes is deterministic and that memorylessness breaks down. Consequently turbulence ages and the one to one mapping between turbulent patches and active DP-sites is not fulfilled. In addition, the interpretation of turbulence as a chaotic saddle with supertransient properties, the basis of recent theoretical progress, does not apply. The discrepancy between channel flow and the established transition model illustrates that seemingly minor geometrical differences between flows can give rise to instabilities and growth mechanisms that fundamentally alter the nature of the transition to turbulence.

Low-order ignition models are important tools in the design of aviation gas turbines. In this paper, a stochastic model that predicts the ignition probability in a combustor based on a time-averaged coldflow solution is extended to include local fuel concentration fluctuations due to the polydisperse nature of the spray. For this, a stochastic approach to modeling such fluctuations is considered, and the effects of the flow and mixture parameters on the resulting equivalence ratio pdfs are investigated. The concentration of fuel in large droplets results in a high variation of the local equivalence ratio, hence affecting the local flammability factor at the model's cell scale. The extinction criterion of the ignition model based on a critical Karlovitz number is calibrated based on ignition probability data from canonical experiments using jet fuel, suggesting critical Karlovitz values of spray flames between 0.2 and 0.6, which is to be contrasted with values of 1.5 for gaseous fuels. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Simulations of a pilot-stabilised flame in a uniformly dispersed ethanol spray are performed using a Doubly Conditional Moment Closure (DCMC) model. The DCMC equation for spray combustion is derived, using the mixture fraction and the reaction progress variable as conditioning variables, including droplet evaporation and differential diffusion terms. A set of closure sub-models is suggested to allow for a first, preliminary application of the DCMC model to the test case presented here. In particular, the DCMC model is used to provide complete closure for the Favre-averaged spray terms in the mean and variance equations of the conditioning variables and the present test case is used to assess the importance of each term. Comparison with experimental data shows a promising overall agreement, whilst differences are related to modelling choices.

The modelling of scalar dissipation rate in conditional methods for large-eddy simulations is investigated based on a priori direct numerical simulation analysis using a dataset representing an igniting non-premixed planar jet flame. The main objective is to provide a comprehensive assessment of models typically used for large-eddy simulations of non-premixed turbulent flames with the Conditional Moment Closure combustion model. The linear relaxation model gives a good estimate of the Favre-filtered scalar dissipation rate throughout the ignition with a value of the related constant close to the one deduced from theoretical arguments. Such value of the constant is one order of magnitude higher than typical values used in Reynolds-averaged approaches. The amplitude mapping closure model provides a satisfactory estimate of the conditionally filtered scalar dissipation rate even in flows characterised by shear driven turbulence and strong density variation.

A spray jet flame is modelled using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) with Doubly Conditional Moment Closure (DCMC). Since turbulent spray flames may include multiple combustion modes, the DCMC model uses both mixture fraction and reaction progress variable as conditioning variables. Conditional spray terms were included in the DCMC model to consider the coupling between evaporation and the flame structure. In the case of spatial homogeneity and in the limit of negligible mixture fraction scalar dissipation rate (SDR), the DCMC equation is shown to reproduce the flame structure of freely propagating laminar flames. For the spray jet flame, a good agreement between the simulation results and the experiments is achieved, in terms of the spray statistics, as well as the instantaneous and mean flame shape. The simulation shows important differences in the flame structure between the turbulent inner and the quasilaminar outer flame branch. The doubly-conditional parametrisation appears to be advantageous for resolving small scale effects related to droplet evaporation. Analysis of the DCMC equation suggests that the behaviour of the flame at its anchoring point is strongly influenced by non-premixed burning modes. The solution appears to be weakly affected by terms of convective transport in the DCMC equation, but significant spatial variations and temporal fluctuations of the conditional reaction rate, around 10 % of the time-based mean, persist. the effect of temperature inhomogeneity on ignition [24] and have so far demonstrated a great potential of the modelling approach for predicting complex, transient combustion phenomena. To the knowledge of the authors, the only simulation of a lab-scale flame using DCMC, coupled with a Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) computation, has been performed by Sitte and Mas-50 torakos [25]. From a broader perspective, the strategy of double-conditioning has also been recently employed in the CMC-related modelling approach of Conditional Source-term Estimation (CSE) [26].In this work, we present an application of the LES-DCMC approach, based on mixture fraction and reaction progress variable as conditioning variables. 55This allows parametrisation of the whole range from non-premixed to fully premixed flames. Moreover, the effect of liquid droplet evaporation on the flame structure is considered by modelling the spray terms in conditional space. Inclusion of conditional evaporation terms in the model equation is challenging and

In this study, the fundamental problem of the ignition of a kerosene single droplet in a quiescent medium at engine high-altitude relight conditions is investigated using numerical simulations. The main objective is to improve the understanding of ignition phenomena with a focus on the effect of droplet evaporation in determining the growth of the ignition kernel and flame establishment. Results show that when the droplet is fully immersed in a high