Turbulent burning velocity and thermo-diffusive instability of premixed flames

TL;DR

This study investigates how thermo-diffusive instability influences turbulent burning velocity in lean hydrogen-air flames through 3D direct numerical simulations, revealing significant effects in weak turbulence but not in moderate turbulence.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical method to determine the critical length scale for flame stability and explores the impact of thermo-diffusive instability on turbulent burning velocity.

Findings

Turbulent burning velocity increases sharply when crossing the critical length scale in weak turbulence.

In moderate turbulence, the instability has little effect on burning velocity.

Thermo-diffusive instability affects weak turbulence flames significantly, aligning with a recent theoretical criterion.

Abstract

Reported in the paper are results of unsteady three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of laminar and turbulent, lean hydrogen-air, complex-chemistry flames propagating in forced turbulence in a box. To explore the eventual influence of thermo-diffusive instability of laminar flames on turbulent burning velocity, (i) a critical length scale {\Lambda}n that bounds regimes of unstable and stable laminar combustion is numerically determined by gradually decreasing the width {\Lambda} of computational domain until a stable laminar flame is obtained and (ii) simulations of turbulent flames are performed by varying the width from {\Lambda} < {\Lambda}n (in this case, the instability is suppressed) to {\Lambda} > {\Lambda}n (in this case, the instability may grow). Moreover, simulations are performed either using mixture-averaged transport properties (low Lewis number flames) or setting diffusivities of all species equal to heat diffusivity of the mixture (equidiffusive flames), with all other things being equal. Obtained results show a significant increase in turbulent burning velocity UT when the boundary {\Lambda} = {\Lambda}n is crossed in weak turbulence, but almost equal values of UT are computed at {\Lambda} < {\Lambda}n and {\Lambda} > {\Lambda}n in moderately turbulent flames characterized by Karlovitz number equal to 3.4 or larger. These results imply that thermo-diffusive instability of laminar premixed flames substantially affects burning velocity in weak turbulence only, in line with a simple criterion proposed by Chomiak and Lipatnikov (Phys. Rev. E 107, 015102, 2023).