Investigation of the thermal behavior effect of the surrounding material environment on the swirling flame structure

Abstract

Summary This paper is focusing on the numerical simulation of a swirling flame, resulting from the interaction of multiple fires, evolving in a free and unlimited environment. A typical system, formed by a central fire source surrounded by four heat sources, is used. Since the thermal characteristic of the surrounding sources is the main engine for the rotation of flame, a detailed study is performed by varying the heating flux of these sources. This study shows that an increase of the heating flux of surrounding sources has as a result an intensification of the penetrating air puffs through the openings between the surrounding four heat sources. These puffs tangentially drive the central flame, thus producing a marked improvement on the angular momentum. Moreover, this study shows that the flame height is strongly affected by the flame rotation. Moreover, two different aspects of the flame height evolution are observed from the flow visualization and the thermal and dynamic fields for the different cases studied.