The hydrodynamics of a reacting impinging laminar jet, or stagnation flame, is studied experimentally and modelled using large activation energy asymptotic models and numerical simulations. The jet-wall geometry yields a stable, steady flame and allows for precise measurement and specification of all boundary conditions on the flow. Laser diagnostic techniques are used to measure velocity and CH radical profiles. The axial velocity profile through a premixed stagnation flame is found to be independent of the nozzle-to-wall separation distance at a fixed nozzle pressure drop, in accord with results for non-reacting impinging laminar jet flows, and thus the strain rate in these flames is only a function of the pressure drop across the nozzle. The relative agreement between the numerical simulations and experiment using a particular combustion chemistry model is found to be insensitive to both the strain rate imposed on the flame and the relative amounts of oxygen and nitrogen in the premixed gas, when the velocity boundary conditions on the simulations are applied in a manner consistent with the formulation of the streamfunction hydrodynamic model. The analytical model predicts unburned, or reference, flame speeds that are slightly lower than the detailed numerical simulations in all cases and the observed dependence of this reference flame speed on strain rate is stronger than that predicted by the model. Experiment and simulation are in excellent agreement for near-stoichiometric methane-air flames, but deviations are observed for ethylene flames with several of the combustion models used. The discrepancies between simulation and experimental profiles are quantified in terms of differences between measured and predicted reference flame speeds, or position of the CH-profile maxima, which are shown to be directly correlated. The direct comparison of the measured and simulated reference flame speeds, S u , can be used to infer the difference between the predicted flame speed of the combustion model employed and the true laminar flame speed of the mixture, S 0 f , i.e. S u = S 0 f , consistent with recently proposed nonlinear extrapolation techniques.

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Differential diffusion effects in premixed combustion are studied in a counter-flow flame experiment for fuel-lean flames of three fuels with different Lewis numbers: methane, propane, and hydrogen. Previous studies of stretched laminar flames show that a maximum reference flame speed is observed for mixtures with Le ≳ 1 at lower flame-stretch values than at extinction, while the reference flame speed for Le ≪ 1 increases until extinction occurs when the flame is constrained by the stagnation point. In this work, counter-flow flame experiments are performed for these same mixtures, building upon the laminar results by using variable high-blockage turbulence-generating plates to generate turbulence intensities from the near-laminar u′/SLo=1 to the maximum u′/SLo achievable for each mixture, on the order of u′/SLo=10. Local, instantaneous reference flamelet speeds within the turbulent flame are extracted from high-speed PIV measurements. Instantaneous flame front positions are measured by Rayleigh scattering. The probability-density functions (PDFs) of instantaneous reference flamelet speeds for the Le ≳ 1 mixtures illustrate that the flamelet speeds are increasing with increasing turbulence intensity. However, at the highest turbulence intensities measured in these experiments, the probability seems to drop off at a velocity that matches experimentally-measured maximum reference flame speeds in previous work. In contrast, in the Le ≪ 1 turbulent flames, the most-probable instantaneous reference flamelet speed increases with increasing turbulence intensity and can, significantly, exceed the maximum reference flame speed measured in counter-flow laminar flames at extinction, with the PDF remaining near symmetric for the highest turbulence intensities. These results are reinforced by instantaneous flame position measurements. Flame-front location PDFs show the most probable flame location is linked both to the bulk flow velocity and to the instantaneous velocity PDFs. Furthermore, hydrogen flame-location PDFs are recognizably skewed upstream as u′/SLo increases, indicating a tendency for the Le ≪ 1 flame brush to propagate farther into the unburned reactants against a steepening average velocity gradient.

Lean premixed combustion counterflow model coupled with detailed chemical kinetics mechanisms are used to study the effects of methane dilution on syngas mixture numerically. The work critically evaluates and examines the effects of methane additions at various methane/syngas ratios and various equivalence ratios (φ = 0.6, 0.65, and 0.7) using the CANTERA package. The results of this study increase the feasibility of incorporating syngas mixture diluted with methane based fuel for lean premixed gas turbine engines. This study indicates that the flame velocity of a syngas mixture (H2:CO-75:25) can be reduced to the flame speed of a methane mixture at an equivalence ratio of 0.6 and standard conditions (1 atm and 298 K) by mixing it with 50% of methane. This could reduce the flashback propensity that syngas mixtures will incur due to the significantly high flame speed. Moreover, this study substantiates that the current detailed mechanism is capable of predicting the one-dimensional reacting flows and it matches remarkably well with experimental data. The approach employed herein can be used to optimize and validate detailed chemical kinetics mechanism without the need to correct the flame speed to zero strain or stretch free from the measured datasets.