A unified fluid model for nonthermal plasmas and reacting flows

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile, high-fidelity fluid modeling framework that seamlessly integrates nonthermal plasma dynamics with reacting flows, enabling detailed simulations of plasma-assisted combustion processes.

Contribution

It presents reactPlasFOAM, a unified solver that dynamically switches modes, solves the electron Boltzmann equation on the fly, and employs adaptive techniques for efficient, accurate plasma-reacting flow simulations.

Findings

Validated against established plasma codes for streamer simulations.

Benchmarked with Cantera for hydrogen flame propagation.

Successfully applied to simulate spark discharge, streamer propagation, and flame dynamics.

Abstract

This work presents a unified fluid modeling framework for reacting flows coupled with nonthermal plasmas (NTPs). Building upon the gas-plasma kinetics solver, ChemPlasKin, and the CFD library, OpenFOAM, the integrated solver, reactPlasFOAM, allows simulation of fully coupled plasma-combustion systems with versatility and high performance. By simplifying the governing equations according to the dominant physical phenomena at each stage, the solver seamlessly switches between four operating modes: streamer, spark, reacting flow, and ionic wind, using coherent data structures. Unlike conventional streamer solvers that rely on pre-tabulated or fitted electron transport properties and reaction rates as functions of the reduced electric field or electron temperature, our approach solves the electron Boltzmann equation (EBE) on the fly to update the electron energy distribution function (EEDF) at the cell level. This enables a high-fidelity representation of evolving plasma chemistry and dynamics by capturing temporal and spatial variations in mixture composition and temperature. To improve computational efficiency for this multiscale, multiphysics system, we employ adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) in the plasma channel, dynamic load balancing for parallelization, and time-step subcycling for fast and slow transport processes. The solver is first verified against six established plasma codes for positive-streamer simulations and benchmarked against Cantera for a freely propagating hydrogen flame, then applied to three cases: (1) spark discharge in airflow; (2) streamer propagation in a premixed flame; and (3) flame dynamics under non-breakdown electric fields. These applications validate the model's ability to predict NTP properties such as fast heating and radical production and demonstrate its potential to reveal two-way coupling between plasma and combustion.