Effects of Lewis number on vorticity and enstrophy transport in turbulent premixed flames

Journal article, 2016

The effects of Lewis number Le on both vorticity and enstrophy transport within the flame brush have been analysed using direct numerical simulation data of freely propagating statistically planar turbulent premixed flames, representing the thin reaction zone regime of premixed turbulent combustion. In the simulations, Le was ranged from 0.34 to 1.2 by keeping the laminar flame speed, thermal thickness, Damkohler, Karlovitz, and Reynolds numbers unchanged. The enstrophy has been shown to decay significantly from the unburned to the burned gas side of the flame brush in the Le approximate to 1.0 flames. However, a considerable amount of enstrophy generation within the flame brush has been observed for the Le = 0.34 case and a similar qualitative behaviour has been observed in a much smaller extent for the Le = 0.6 case. The vorticity components have been shown to exhibit anisotropic behaviour within the flame brush, and the extent of anisotropy increases with decreasing Le. The baroclinic torque term has been shown to be principally responsible for this anisotropic behaviour. The vortex stretching and viscous dissipation terms have been found to be the leading order contributors to the enstrophy transport for all cases, but the baroclinic torque and the sink term due to dilatation play increasingly important role for flames with decreasing Le. Furthermore, the correlation between the fluctuations of enstrophy and dilatation rate has been shown to play an important role in determining the material derivative of enstrophy based on the mean flow in the case of a low Le.