Self-adaptive turbulence eddy simulation of a premixed jet combustor

The self-adaptive turbulence eddy simulation (SATES) is employed to investigate the lean premixed methane/air turbulent flame in a single-nozzle model gas turbine combustor, in which the high axial momentum jet issuing from an off-center nozzle facilitates the development of a large-scale, dominant lateral recirculation zone that stabilizes the flame. For turbulence modeling, the SATES method can dynamically adjust the proportion of resolving and modeling of turbulent scales according to the local grid scale and turbulence length scales, thus depressing the gird-sensitivity in large eddy simulation (LES) calculation. For combustion modeling, the thickened flame model with a reduced chemistry mechanism is integrated into the SATES turbulence modeling framework to capture the unsteady flame dynamics. The accuracy of SATES results is assessed against experimental data, as well as the ones from LES and the detached eddy simulation (DES) of this burner with the same combustion model and grids. The predicted length of large-scale recirculation of the flow field by SATES is significantly better than that by LES and DES with low mesh resolution. Detailed comparisons show that the SATES adaptively improves the modeling degree of near-wall turbulence to improve the prediction accuracy with the low grid resolution. Similar to LES, the SATES method does not cause serious delay of shear layer instability and weakening of flame wrinkle observed in DES. The study demonstrates the suitability and accuracy of the hybrid turbulence modeling methods of SATES for complex turbulent flame simulations coupled with suitable combustion model.