Validating a Model for Bluff-Body Burners Using the HM1 Turbulent Nonpremixed Flame

Abstract

We conducted computational fluid dynamics modeling of the bluff-body stabilized flame known as HM1, which was studied experimentally in detail at the University of Sydney to provide modelers with sufficient measurements to allow validation of their computational models. This benchmark flame is turbulent nonpremixed with a fuel-jet composed of 50% hydrogen and 50% methane by volume (hence the acronym HM) surrounded by a coflow of air, which is bounded by the walls of a wind tunnel. We successfully performed computational modeling of this flame, utilizing the published data about the problem settings and using a customized solver based on the open-source control-volume toolkit OpenFOAM. We describe the model settings and report the results of our predictions and show how they agree well with the measurements in terms of axial and radial profiles of miscellaneous flow variables. We conducted the simulation employing two meshes and obtained a reasonably mesh-independent solution. The results suggest that the model can provide satisfactory results with as few as 10000 wedge-type computational cells. The model thus represents a free and fast computer tool to assist in the design of industrial bluff-body burners that possess similarity with the analyzed burner here.

Keywords: Flame, nonpremixed, TNF, CFD, OpenFOAM, bluff-body, combustion