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Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

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search.filters.applied.f.advisor: Menon, Suresh × End date: 2014 × search.filters.applied.f.isOrgUnitOfPublicationTitle: Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering ×

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Large-eddy simulations of high-pressure shear coaxial flows relevant for H2/O2 rocket engines

2013-01-11 , Masquelet, Matthieu Marc

The understanding and prediction of transient phenomena inside Liquid Rocket Engines (LREs) have been very difficult because of the many challenges posed by the conditions inside the combustion chamber. This is especially true for injectors involving liquid oxygen LOX and gaseous hydrogen GH₂. A wide range of length scales needs to be captured from high-pressure flame thicknesses of a few microns to the length of the chamber of the order of a meter. A wide range of time scales needs to be captured, again from the very small timescales involved in hydrogen chemistry to low-frequency longitudinal acoustics in the chamber. A wide range of densities needs to be captured, from the cryogenic liquid oxygen to the very hot and light combustion products. A wide range of flow speeds needs to be captured, from the incompressible liquid oxygen jet to the supersonic nozzle. Whether one desires to study these issues numerically or experimentally, they combine to make simulations and measurements very difficult whereas reliable and accurate data are required to understand the complex physics at stake. This thesis focuses on the numerical simulations of flows relevant to LRE applications using Large Eddy Simulations (LES). It identifies the required features to tackle such complex flows, implements and develops state-of-the-art solutions and apply them to a variety of increasingly difficult problems. More precisely, a multi-species real gas framework is developed inside a conservative, compressible solver that uses a state-of-the-art hybrid scheme to capture at the same time the large density gradients and the turbulent structures that can be found in a high-pressure liquid rocket engine. Particular care is applied to the implementation of the real gas framework with detailed derivations of thermodynamic properties, a modular implementation of select equations of state in the solver. and a new efficient iterative method. Several verification cases are performed to evaluate this implementation and the conservative properties of the solver. It is then validated against laboratory-scaled flows relevant to rocket engines, from a gas-gas reacting injector to a liquid-gas injector under non-reacting and reacting conditions. All the injectors considered contain a single shear coaxial element and the reacting cases only deal with H₂-O₂ systems. A gaseous oyxgen-gaseous hydrogen (GOX-GH₂) shear coaxial injector, typical of a staged combustion engine, is first investigated. Available experimental data is limited to the wall heat flux but extensive comparisons are conducted between three-dimensional and axisymmetric solutions generated by this solver as well as by other state-of-the-art solvers through a NASA validation campaign. It is found that the unsteady and three-dimensional character of LES is critical in capturing physical flow features, even on a relatively coarse grid and using a 7-step mechanism instead of a 21-step mechanism. The predictions of the wall heat flux, the only available data, are not very good and highlight the importance of grid resolution and near-wall models for LES. To perform more quantitative comparisons, a new experimental setup is investigated under both non-reacting and reacting conditions. The main difference with the previous setup, and in fact with most of the other laboratory rigs from the literature, is the presence of a strong co-flow to mimic the surrounding flow of other injecting elements. For the non-reacting case, agreement with the experimental high-speed visualization is very good, both qualitatively and quantitatively but for the reacting case, only poor agreement is obtained, with the numerical flame significantly shorter than the observed one. In both cases, the role of the co-flow and inlet conditions are investigated and highlighted. A validated LES solver should be able to go beyond some experimental constraints and help define the next direction of investigation. For the non-reacting case, a new scaling law is suggested after a review of the existing literature and a new numerical experiment agrees with the prediction of this scaling law. A slightly modified version of this non-reacting setup is also used to investigate and validate the Linear-Eddy Model (LEM), an advanced sub-grid closure model, in real gas flows for the first time. Finally, the structure of the trans-critical flame observed in the reacting case hints at the need for such more advanced turbulent combustion model for this class of flow.

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Large eddy simulation of syngas-air diffusion flames with artificial neural networks based chemical kinetics

2011-09-07 , Sanyal, Anuradha

In the present study syngas-air diffusion flames are simulated using LES with artificial neural network (ANN) based chemical kinetics modeling and the results are compared with previous direct numerical simulation (DNS) study, which exhibits significant extinction-reignition and forms a challenging problem for ANN. The objective is to obtain speed-up in chemistry computation while still having the accuracy of stiff ODE solver. The ANN methodology is used in two ways: 1) to compute the instantaneous source term in the linear eddy mixing (LEM) subgrid combustion model used within LES framework, i.e., laminar-ANN used within LEMLES framework (LANN-LEMLES), and 2) to compute the filtered source terms directly within the LES framework, i.e., turbulent-ANN used within LES (TANN-LES), which further dicreases the computational speed. A thermo-chemical database is generated from a standalone one-dimensional LEM simulation and used to train the LANN for species source terms on grid-size of Kolmogorov scale. To train the TANN coefficients the thermo-chemical database from the standalone LEM simulation is filtered over the LES grid-size and then used for training. To evaluate the performance of the TANN methodology, the low Re test case is simulated with direct integration for chemical kinetics modeling in LEM subgrid combustion model within the LES framework (DI-LEMLES), LANN-LEMLES andTANN-LES. The TANN is generated for a low range of Ret in order to simulate the specific test case. The conditional statistics and pdfs of key scalars and the temporal evolution of the temperature and scalar dissipation rates are compared with the data extracted from DNS. Results show that the TANN-LES methodology can capture the extinction-reignition physics with reasonable accuracy compared to the DNS. Another TANN is generated for a high range of Ret expected to simulate test cases with different Re and a range of grid resolutions. The flame structure and the scalar dissipation rate statistics are analyzed to investigate success of the same TANN in simulating a range of test cases. Results show that the TANN-LES using TANN generated fora large range of Ret is capable of capturing the extinction-reignition physics with a very little loss of accuracy compared to the TANN-LES using TANN generated for the specific test case. The speed-up obtained by TANN-LES is significant compared to DI-LEMLES and LANN-LEMLES.

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On the high fidelity simulation of chemical explosions and their interaction with solid particle clouds

2010-06-09 , Balakrishnan, Kaushik

High explosive charges when detonated ensue in a flow field characterized by several physical phenomena that include blast wave propagation, hydrodynamic instabilities, real gas effects, fluid mixing and afterburn effects. Solid metal particles are often added to explosives to augment the total impulsive loading, either through direct bombardment if inert, or through afterburn energy release if reactive. These multiphase explosive charges, termed as heterogeneous explosives, are of interest from a scientific perspective as they involve the confluence and interplay of various additional physical phenomena such as shock-particle interaction, particle dispersion, ignition, and inter-phase mass, momentum and energy transfer. In the current research effort, chemical explosions in multiphase environments are investigated using a robust, state-of-the-art Eulerian-gas, Lagrangian-solid methodology that can handle both the dense and dilute particle regimes. Explosions into ambient air as well as into aluminum particle clouds are investigated, and hydrodynamic instabilities such as Rayleigh- Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov result in a mixing layer where the detonation products mix with the air and afterburn. The particles in the ambient cloud, when present, are observed to pick up significant amounts of momentum and heat from the gas, and thereafter disperse, ignite and burn. The amount of mixing and afterburn are observed to be independent of particle size, but dependent on the particle mass loading and cloud dimensions. Due to fast response times, small particles are observed to cluster as they interact with the vortex rings in the mixing layer, which leads to their preferential ignition/ combustion. The total deliverable impulsive loading from heterogeneous explosive charges containing inert steel particles is estimated for a suite of operating parameters and compared, and it is demonstrated that heterogeneous explosive charges deliver a higher near-field impulse than homogeneous explosive charges containing the same mass of the high explosive. Furthermore, particles are observed to introduce significant amounts of hydrodynamic instabilities in the mixing layer, resulting in augmented fluctuation intensities and fireball size, and different growth rates for heterogeneous explosions compared to homogeneous explosions. For aluminized explosions, the particles are observed to burn in two regimes, and the average particle velocities at late times are observed to be independent of the initial solid volume fraction in the explosive charge. Overall, this thesis provides useful insights on the role played by solid particles in chemical explosions.

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Study of compressible turbulent flows in supersonic environment by large-eddy simulation

2009-02-19 , Genin, Franklin Marie

A Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) methodology adapted to the resolution of high Reynolds number turbulent flows in supersonic conditions was proposed and developed. A novel numerical scheme was designed, that switches from a low-dissipation central scheme for turbulence resolution to a flux difference splitting scheme in regions of discontinuities. Furthermore, a state-of-the-art closure model was extended in order to take compressibility effects and the action of shock / turbulence interaction into account. The proposed method was validated against fundamental studies of high speed flows and shock / turbulence interaction studies. This new LES approach was employed for the study of shock / turbulent shear layer interaction as a mixing-augmentation technique, and highlighted the efficiency in mixing improvement after the interaction, but also the limited spatial extent of this turbulent enhancement. A second practical study was conducted by simulating the injection of a sonic jet normally to a supersonic crossflow. The validity of the simulation was assessed by comparison with experimental data, and the dynamics of the interaction was examined. The sources of vortical structures were identified, with a particular emphasis on the impact of the flow speed onto the vortical evolution.

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Multi-phase flows using discontinuous Galerkin methods

2012-08-28 , Gryngarten, Leandro Damian

This thesis is concerned with the development of numerical techniques to simulate compressible multi-phase flows, in particular a high-accuracy numerical approach with mesh adaptivity. The Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method was chosen as the framework for this work for being characterized for its high-order of accuracy -thus low numerical diffusion- and being compatible with mesh adaptivity due to its locality. A DG solver named DiGGIT (Discontinuous Galerkin at the Georgia Institute of Technology) has been developed and several aspects of the method have been studied. The Local Discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method -an extension of DG for equations with high-order derivatives- was extended to solve multiphase flows using Diffused Interface Methods (DIM). This multi-phase model includes the convection of the volume fraction, which is treated as a Hamilton-Jacobi equation. This is the first study, to the author's knowledge, in which the volume fraction of a DIM is solved using the DG and the LDG methods. The formulation is independent of the Equation of State (EOS) and it can differ for each phase. This allows for a more accurate representation of the different fluids by using cubic EOSs, like the Peng-Robinson and the van der Waals models. Surface tension is modeled with a new numerical technique appropriate for LDG. Spurious oscillations due to surface tension are common to all the capturing schemes, and this new approach presents oscillations comparable in magnitude to the most common schemes. The moment limiter (ML) was generalized for non-uniform grids with hanging nodes that result from adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). The effect of characteristic, primitive, or conservative decomposition in the limiting stage was studied. The characteristic option cannot be used with the ML in multi-dimensions. In general, primitive variable decomposition is a better option than with conservative variables, particularly for multiphase flows, since the former type of decomposition reduces the numerical oscillations at material discontinuities. An additional limiting technique was introduced for DIM to preserve positivity while minimizing the numerical diffusion, which is especially important at the interface. The accuracy-preserving total variation diminishing (AP-TVD) marker for ``troubled-cell' detection, which uses an averaged-derivative basis, was modified to use the Legendre polynomial basis. Given that the latest basis is generally used for DG, the new approach avoids transforming to the averaged-derivative basis, what results in a more efficient technique. Furthermore, a new error estimator was proposed to determine where to refine or coarsen the grid. This estimator was compared against other estimator used in the literature and it showed an improved performance. In order to provide equal order of accuracy in time as in space, the commonly used 3rd-order TVD Runge-Kutta (RK) scheme in the DG method was replaced in some cases by the Spectral Deferred Correction (SDC) technique. High orders in time were shown to only be required when the error in time is significant. For instance, convection-dominated compressible flows require for stability a time step much smaller than is required for accuracy, so in such cases 3rd-order TVD RK resulted to be more efficient than SDC with higher orders. All these new capabilities were included in DiGGIT and have provided a generalized approach capable of solving sub- and super-critical flows at sub- and super-sonic speeds, using a high-order scheme in space and time, and with AMR. Canonical test cases are presented to verify and validate the formulation in one, two, and three dimensions. Finally, the solver is applied to practical applications. Shock-bubble interaction is studied and the effect of the different thermodynamic closures is assessed. Interaction between single-drops and a wall is simulated. Sticking and the onset of splashing are observed. In addition, the solver is used to simulate turbulent flows, where the high-order of accuracy clearly shows its benefits. Finally, the methodology is challenged with the simulation of a liquid jet in cross flow.

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Large eddy simulation of heated pulsed jets in high speed turbulent crossflow

2010-08-12 , Pasumarti, Venkata-Ramya

The jet-in-crossflow problem has been extensively studied, mainly because of its applications in film cooling and injector designs. It has been established that in low-speed flows, pulsing the jet significantly enhances mixing and jet penetration. This work investigates the effects of pulsing on mixing and jet trajectory in high speed (compressible) flow, using Large Eddy Simulation. Jets with different density ratios, velocity ratios and momentum ratios are pulsed from an injector into a crossflow. Density ratios used are 0.55 (CH4/air), 1.0 (air/air) and 1.5 (CO2/air). Results are compared with the low speed cases studied in the past and then analyzed for high speed scaling. The simulations show that the lower density jet develops faster than a higher density jet. This results in more jet spread for the lower density jet. Scaling for jet spread and the decay of centerline jet concentration for these cases are established, and variable density scaling law is developed and used to predict jet penetration in the far field. In most non-premixed combustor systems, the fuel and air being mixed are at different initial temperatures and densities. To account for these effects, heated jets at temperatures equal to 540K and 3000K have been run. It has been observed that, in addition to the lower density of heated jets, the higher kinematic viscosity effects the jet penetration. This effect has been included and validated in the scaling law for the heated jet trajectory.

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Artificial neural networks based subgrid chemistry model for turbulent reactive flow simulations

2009-08-17 , Sen, Baris Ali

Two new models to calculate the species instantaneous and filtered reaction rates for multi-step, multi-species chemical kinetics mechanisms are developed based on the artificial neural networks (ANN) approach. The proposed methodologies depend on training the ANNs off-line on a thermo-chemical database representative of the actual composition and turbulence level of interest. The thermo-chemical database is constructed by stand-alone linear eddy mixing (LEM) model simulations under both premixed and non-premixed conditions, where the unsteady interaction of turbulence with chemical kinetics is included as a part of the training database. In this approach, the information regarding the actual geometry of interest is not needed within the LEM computations. The developed models are validated extensively on the large eddy simulations (LES) of (i) premixed laminar-flame-vortex-turbulence interaction, (ii) temporally mixing non-premixed flame with extinction-reignition characteristics, and (iii) stagnation point reverse flow combustor, which utilizes exhaust gas re-circulation technique. Results in general are satisfactory, and it is shown that the ANN provides considerable amount of memory saving and speed-up with reasonable and reliable accuracy. The speed-up is strongly affected by the stiffness of the reduced mechanism used for the computations, whereas the memory saving is considerable regardless.

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On recessed cavity flame-holders in supersonic cross-flows

2012-04-03 , Retaureau, Ghislain J.

Flame-holding in a recessed cavity is investigated experimentally in a Mach 2.5 preheated cross-flow for both stable and unstable combustion, with a relatively low preheating. Self-sustained combustion is investigated for stagnation pressures and temperatures reaching 1.4 MPa and 750 K. In particular, cavity blowout is characterized with respect to cavity aspect ratio (L/D =2.84 - 3.84), injection strategy (floor - ramp), aft ramp angle (90 deg - 22.5 deg) and multi-fuel mixture (CH₄-H₂ or CH₄-C₂H₄ blends). The results show that small hydrogen addition to methane leads to significant increase in flame stability, whereas ethylene addition has a more gradual effect. Since the multi-fuels used here are composed of a slow and a fast chemistry fuel, the resulting blowout region has a slow (methane dominant) and a fast (hydrogen or ethylene dominant) branch. Regardless of the fuel composition, the pressure at blowout is close to the non-reacting pressure imposed by the cross-flow, suggesting that combustion becomes potentially unsustainable in the cavity at the sub-atmospheric pressures encountered in these supersonic studies. The effect of preheating is also investigated and results show that the stability domain broadens with increasing stagnation temperature. However, smaller cavities appear less sensitive to the cross-flow preheating, and stable combustion is achieved over a smaller range of fuel flow rate, which may be the result of limited residence and mixing time. The blowout data point obtained at lower fuel flow rate fairly matches the empirical model developed by Rasmussen et al. for floor injection phi = 0.0028 Da^-.8, where phi is the equivalence ratio and Da the Damkohler number. An alternate model is proposed here that takes into account the ignition to scale the blowout data. Since the mass of air entrained into the cavity cannot be accurately estimated and the cavity temperature is only approximated from the wall temperature, the proposed scaling has some uncertainty. Nevertheless the new phi-Da scaling is shown to preserve the subtleties of the blowout trends as seen in the current experimental data.

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Richtmyer-Meshkov instability with reshock and particle interactions

2010-07-08 , Ukai, Satoshi

Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) occurs when an interface of two fluids with different densities is impulsively accelerated. The main interest in RMI is to understand the growth of perturbations, and numerous theoretical models have been developed and validated against experimental/numerical studies. However, most of the studies assume very simple initial conditions. Recently, more complex RMI has been studied, and this study focuses on two cases: reshocked RMI and multiphase RMI. It is well known that reshock to the species interface causes rapid growth of interface perturbation amplitude. However, the growth rates after reshock are not well understood, and there are no practical theoretical models yet due to its complex interface conditions at reshock. A couple of empirical expressions have been derived from experimental and numerical studies, but these models are limited to certain interface conditions. This study performs parametric numerical studies on various interface conditions, and the empirical models on the reshocked RMI are derived for each case. It is shown that the empirical models can be applied to a wide range of initial conditions by choosing appropriate values of the coefficient. The second part of the study analyzes the flow physics of multiphase RMI. The linear growth model for multiphase RMI is derived, and it is shown that the growth rates depend on two nondimensional parameters: the mass loading of the particles and the Stokes number. The model is compared to the numerical predictions under two types of conditions: a shock wave hitting (1) a perturbed species interface surrounded by particles, and (2) a perturbed particle cloud. In the first type of the problem, the growth rates obtained by the numerical simulations are in agreement with the multiphase RMI growth model when Stokes number is small. However, when the Stokes number is very large, the RMI motion follows the single-phase RMI growth model since the particle do not rapidly respond while the RMI instability grows. The second type of study also shows that the multiphase RMI model is applicable if Stokes number is small. Since the particles themselves characterize the interface, the range of applicable Stokes number is smaller than the first study. If the Stokes number is in the order of one or larger, the interface experiences continuous acceleration and shows the growth profile similar to a Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

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A new two-scale model for large eddy simulation of wall-bounded flows

2009-05-14 , Gungor, Ayse Gul

A new hybrid approach to model high Reynolds number wall-bounded turbulent flows is developed based on coupling the two-level simulation (TLS) approach in the inner region with conventional large eddy simulation (LES) away from the wall. This new approach is significantly different from previous near-wall approaches for LES. In this hybrid TLS-LES approach, a very fine small-scale (SS) mesh is embedded inside the coarse LES mesh in the near-wall region. The SS equations capture fine-scale temporal and spatial variations in all three cartesian directions for all three velocity components near the wall. The TLS-LES equations are derived based on defining a new scale separation operator. The TLS-LES equations in the transition region are obtained by blending the TLS large-scale and LES equations. A new incompressible parallel flow solver is developed that accurately and reliably predicts turbulent flows using TLS-LES. The solver uses a primitive variable formulation based on an artificial compressibility approach and a dual time stepping method. The advective terms are discretized using fourth-order energy conservative finite differences. The SS equations are also integrated in parallel, which reduces the overall cost of the TLS-LES approach. The TLS-LES approach is validated and investigated for canonical channel flows, channel flow with adverse pressure gradient and asymmetric plane diffuser flow. The results suggest that the TLS-LES approach yields very reasonable predictions of most of the crucial flow features in spite of using relatively coarse grids.

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