Numerical simulation of a confined methane/air laminar diffusion flame by the method of lines

A parallel computational fluid dynamics code based on the method of lines approach was developed for the simulation of transient laminar two-dimensional reacting flows. The chemistry was modeled by flame-sheet approximation. The predictive ability and accuracy of the code was tested by applying it to the prediction of a confined methane/air laminar diffusion flame and comparing its predictions with other numerical study and experimental data available in the literature. The predicted velocity, temperature and major species concentrations were found to be in reasonably good agreement with other numerical results and measurements. Execution times resulting from the use of several ordinary differential equation solvers in the code were examined and ROWMAP was found to be superior. A static load balancing strategy was used to improve the performance of the parallel code. A comparison of speed-ups and efficiencies for the runs with and without load balancing showed a considerable decrease in the central processing unit time of the parallel code when load balancing was performed. Finally, the predictive ability of the code for transient combustion was presented.