CFD MODELING OF THE INFLUENCE OF FUEL STAGING ON THE MIXING QUALITY AND FLAME CHARACTERISTICS IN A LEAN PREMIXED COMBUSTOR

In this paper; we investigate the feasibility and limitation of modeling non reacting and reacting flows of a premixed burner with steady RANS. The burner investigated here is a standard industrial swirl-inducing burner equipped with a staging of fuel injection. The simulation results on mixing quality, flame shape and position and convective time delays are compared to measurements which are performed in a water test rig and in a combustion chamber The RANS simulations can qualitatively capture the trends observed from experimental data. The simulated mixing quality evolves in a similar way as the experimental data when the fuel distribution is changed. Using a turbulent Schmidt number of 0.2, the absolute values are in good agreement with the measured ones. Variations of the fuel injection distribution lead to changes in the flame shape and its stabilization location. The simulated reacting flow optimized with respect to the turbulent Schmidt/Prandtl number (Sc-t/Pr-t = 0.55) is able to predict the changes in flame shape and flame position. However, the shifting of the flame is not as distinct as observed in the experiments. This explains that variations in simulated convective time delays are also smaller than in reality Nevertheless, the qualitative characteristics of the time delays depending on the fuel distribution parameter can be reproduced and absolute values are generally similar to those of the measurements.