A quasi-DNS of the partially premixed turbulent Sydney flame in configuration FJ200-5GP-Lr75-57 has been conducted using detailed molecular diffusion for multi-component mixtures and complex reaction mechanisms. In order to study flame dynamics like regime transition in this flame for the development of new combustion models and to directly compare the quasi-DNS to different LES models, the simulation results are compiled into a data base. Because the simulation was performed with OpenFOAM, we demonstrate the quasi-DNS capabilities of OpenFOAM by performing canonical test cases. They attest that OpenFOAM’s cubic discretization has lower numerical diffusion compared to classical central difference schemes and can reach higher than second order convergence rate in some cases. The quasi-DNS of the Sydney flame is conducted with a self-developed reacting flow solver which is able to accurately compute molecular diffusion coefficients from kinetic gas theory and employs a fast implementation for detailed reaction mechanisms. The computational mesh is shown to be able to resolve the flow as well as the flame front sufficiently for the quasi-DNS. Comparisons with experimental data also show that the simulation can quantitatively reproduce measured time-mean and time-RMS statistics.

OpenFOAM is one of the most widely used open-source computational fluid dynamics tools and often employed for chemical engineering applications. However, there is no systematic assessment of OpenFOAM’s numerical accuracy and parallel performance for chemically reacting flows. For the first time, this work provides a direct comparison between OpenFOAM’s built-in flow solvers as well as its reacting flow extension EBIdnsFoam with four other, well established high-fidelity combustion codes. Quantification of OpenFOAM’s numerical accuracy is achieved with a benchmark suite that has recently been established by Abdelsamie et al. (Comput Fluids 223:104935, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compfluid.2021.104935) for combustion codes. Fourth-order convergence can be achieved with OpenFOAM’s own cubic interpolation scheme and excellent agreement with other high-fidelity codes is presented for incompressible flows as well as more complex cases including heat conduction and molecular diffusion in multi-component mixtures. In terms of computational performance, the simulation of incompressible non-reacting flows with OpenFOAM is slower than the other codes, but similar performance is achieved for reacting flows with excellent parallel scalability. For the benchmark case of hydrogen flames interacting with a Taylor–Green vortex, differences between low-Mach and compressible solvers are identified which highlight the need for more investigations into reliable benchmarks for reacting flow solvers. The results from this work provide the first contribution of a fully implicit compressible combustion solver to the benchmark suite and are thus valuable to the combustion community. The OpenFOAM cases are publicly available and serve as guide for achieving the highest numerical accuracy as well as a basis for future developments.

The numerical investigation of quenching distances in laminar flows is mainly concerned with two setups: head-on quenching (HOQ) and side-wall quenching (SWQ). While most of the numerical work has been conducted for HOQ with good agreement between simulation and experiment, far less analysis has been done for SWQ. Most of the SWQ simulations used simplified diffusion models or reduced chemistry and achieved reasonable agreement with experiments. However, it has been found that quenching distances for the SWQ setup differ from experimental results if detailed diffusion models and chemical reaction mechanisms are employed. Side-wall quenching is investigated numerically in this work with steady-state 2D and 3D simulations of an experimental flame setup. The simulations fully resolve the flame and employ detailed reaction mechanisms as well as molecular diffusion models. The goal is to provide data for the sensitivity of numerical quenching distances to different parameters. Quenching distances are determined based on different markers: chemiluminescent species, temperature and OH iso-surface. The quenching distances and heat fluxes at the cold wall from simulations and measurements agree well qualitatively. However, quenching distances from the simulations are lower than those from the experiments by a constant factor, which is the same for both methane and propane flames and also for a wide range of equivalence ratios and different markers. A systematic study of different influencing factors is performed: Changing the reaction mechanism in the simulation has little impact on the quenching distance, which has been tested with over 20 different reaction mechanisms. Detailed diffusion models like the mixture-averaged diffusion model and multi-component diffusion model with and without Soret effect yield the same quenching distances. By assuming a unity Lewis number, however, quenching distances increase significantly and have better agreement with measurements. This was validated by two different numerical codes (OpenFOAM and FASTEST) and also by 1D head-on quenching simulations (HOQ). Superimposing a fluctuation on the inlet velocity in the simulation also increases the quenching distance on average compared to the reference steady-state case. The inlet velocity profile, temperature boundary condition of the rod and radiation have a negligible effect. Finally, three dimensional simulations are necessary in order to obtain the correct velocity field in the SWQ computations. This however has only a negligible effect on quenching distances.

Identifying combustion regimes in terms of premixed and non-premixed characteristics is an important task for understanding combustion phenomena and the structure of flames. A quasi-DNS database of the compositionally inhomogeneous partially premixed Sydney/Sandia flame in configuration FJ-5GP-Lr75-57 is used to directly compare different types of flame regime markers from literature. In the simulation of the flame, detailed chemistry and diffusion models are utilized and no turbulence and combustion models are used as the flame front and flow are fully resolved near the nozzle. This allows evaluating the regime markers as a post-processing step without modeling assumptions and directly comparing regime markers based on gradient alignment, drift term analysis and gradient free regime identification. The goal is not to find the correct regime marker, which might be impossible due to the different set of assumptions of every marker and the generally vague definition of the partially premixed regime itself, but to compare their behavior when applied to a resolved turbulent flame with partially premixed characteristics.