Large Eddy Simulation of a pressurized, partially-premixed swirling flame with finite-rate chemistry

Finite-rate chemical effects at gas turbine conditions lead to incomplete combustion and well-known emissions issues. Although a thin flame front is preserved on an average, the instantaneous flame location can vary in thickness and location due to heat losses or imperfect mixing. Postflame phenomena (slow CO oxidation or thermal NO production) can be expected to be significantly influenced by turbulent eddy structures. Since typical gas turbine combustor calculations require insight into flame stabilization as well as pollutant formation, combustion models are required to be sensitive to the instantaneous and local flow conditions. Unfortunately, few models that adequately describe turbulence-chemistry interactions are tractable in the industrial context. A widely used model capable of employing finite-rate chemistry is the eddy dissipation concept (EDC) model of Magnussen. Its application in large eddy simulations (LES) is problematic mainly due to a strong sensitivity to the model constants, which were based on an isotropic cascade analysis in the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) context. The objectives of this paper are: (i) to formulate the EDC cascade idea in the context of LES; and (ii) to validate the model using experimental data consisting of velocity (particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements) and major species (1D Raman measurements), at four axial locations in the near-burner region of a Siemens SGT-100 industrial gas turbine combustor.