Large-Eddy-Simulation of Turbulent Non-Premixed Hydrogen Combustion Using the Filtered Tabulated Chemistry Approach

Abstract

With air traffic expected to grow 5% annually until the year 2030, alternative fuels such as hydrogen are being investigated in order to tackle the current environmental crisis. Due to safety concerns, future hydrogen combustion chambers will require new designs of injection systems and are expected to operate under multi-mode combustion regimes. From a Large-Eddy-Simulation (LES) perspective, a prerequisite for the shift towards new hy- drogen combustion chamber technologies is a robust turbulent combustion model capable of functioning in non-premixed condi- tions. Turbulent combustion modeling using flame front filtering is a well-developed strategy in premixed combustion (Filtered- TAbulated Chemistry for Large-Eddy-Simulation - F-TACLES). This approach has been extended to non-premixed flames how- ever, it suffers from high flame filter size sensitivity. Moreover, thin hydrogen flame fronts will result in lower resolution on the LES grid, potentially amplifying this issue. In order to address the feasibility of the non-premixed F-TACLES model applied to hydrogen fuel, simple 1-D and 2-D laminar counterflow diffusion flames are computed. The model is then tested on the 3-D Sandia hydrogen jet flame with a Reynolds number of 10000. Simulations and a-priori tests show that tabulated sub-grid-scale correction terms are stiff and can result in nonphysical results, however the model is capable of correctly reproducing non-premixed flame structures for small filter sizes.