Numerical simulations of turbulent combustion

Reviewartikel, 2020

Turbulent burning of gaseous fuels is widely used for energy conversion in stationary power generation, e.g., gas turbines, land transportation, e.g., piston engines, and aviation, e.g., aero-engine afterburners. Nevertheless, fundamental understanding of turbulent combustion is still limited, because it is a highly non-linear and multiscale process that involves various local phenomena and thousands (e.g., for gasoline-air mixtures) of chemical reactions between hundreds of species, including a number of reactions that control emissions from flames. Therefore, there is a strong need for elaborating high fidelity, advanced numerical models and methods that (i) will catch complex combustion chemistry and the governing physical mechanisms of flame-turbulence interaction and, consequently, (ii) will make turbulent combustion computations an e cient predictive tool for applied research. In particular, such computations are required to facilitate development of a new generation of ultra clean and highly e cient internal combustion engines that will allow the society to properly respond to current environmental and e ciency challenges. The goal of this special issue is to provide a forum for recent developments in such numerical models and methods. The special issue contains papers aimed at (i) developing and validating high fidelity models and e cient numerical methods for Computational Fluid Dynamics research into turbulent, complex-chemistry combustion in laboratory burners and in engines or (ii) improving fundamental understanding of flame-turbulence interaction by analyzing data obtained in unsteady multi-dimensional numerical simulations.