Numerical Study of Turbulent Jet Ignition in a Lean Premixed Configuration

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of a hot combustion product jet interacting with a lean premixed hydrogen-air coflow are conducted to fundamentally investigate turbulent jet ignition (TJI) in a three-dimensional configuration. TJI is an efficient method for initiating and controlling combustion in ultra-lean combustion systems. Fully compressible gas dynamics and species equations are solved with high order finite difference methods. The hydrogen-air reaction is simulated with a reliable detailed chemical kinetics mechanism. The physical processes involved in the TJI-assisted combustion are investigated by considering the flame heat release, temperature, species concentrations, vorticity, and Baroclinc torque. The complex turbulent flame and flow structures are delineated in three main: i) hot product jet, ii) burned-mixed, and iii) flame zones. In the TJI-assisted combustion, the flow structures and the flame features such as flame speed, temperature, and species distribution are found to be quite different than those in “standard” turbulent premixed combustion due to the existence of a high energy turbulent hot product jet. The flow structures and statistics are also found to be different than those normally seen in non-isothermal non-reacting jets.