Strain Rate Effects on Head-on Quenching of Laminar Premixed Methane-air flames

Head-on quenching is a canonical configuration for flame-wall interaction. In the present study, the transient process of a laminar premixed flame impinging on a wall is investigated for different strain rates, while previous studies with detailed chemistry and transport focused only on unstrained conditions. Increasing strain rate leads to a reduction in the normalized quenching distance, and an increase in the normalized wall heat flux, both are considered as global flame quantities. Looking more into the local microstructure of the quenching process, CO formation and oxidation near the wall are shifted to higher temperatures under higher strain rates. Further, the local flame structure and the thermochemical state are affected by differential diffusion driven by differences in species’ gradients and diffusivities. Quenching leads to increased species’ gradients and consequently differential diffusion is amplified near the wall compared to propagating flames. However, this effect is suppressed for increasing strain rates, which is explained in more detail by a source term analysis of the transport equation for the differential diffusion parameter ZHC. Results for the global quantities and the local flame structure show that the impact of the strain rate weakens for higher wall temperatures. Finally, the analyses of the thermo-chemical quantities in the composition space shows that H2 can be a good parameter to characterize the strain rate both for propagating and quenching flamelet.