LES-CMC simulations of a turbulent bluff-body flame

Abstract The large Eddy simulations (LES)-conditional moment closure (CMC) method with detailed chemistry is applied to a bluff-body stabilized flame. Computations of the velocity and mixture fraction fields show good agreement with the experiments. Temperature and major species are well-predicted throughout the flame with the exception of the flow regions in the outer shear layer close to the nozzle where the pure mixing between hot recirculating products and fresh oxidizer cannot be captured. LES-CMC generally improves on results obtained with RANS-CMC and on LES that uses one representative flamelet to model the dependence of reactive species on mixture fraction. Simulated CO mass fractions are generally in good agreement with the experimental data although a 10% overprediction can be found at downstream positions. NO predictions show a distinct improvement over the flamelet approach, however, simulations overpredict NO mass fractions at all downstream locations due to an overprediction of temperature close to the nozzle. The potential of LES-CMC to predict unsteady finite rate effects is demonstrated by the prediction of endothermic—or “flame cooling”—regions close to the neck of the recirculation zone that favours ethylene production via the methane fuel decomposition channel.