23

rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
Numerical Simulations of Turbulent Non-premixed Flames
S. Sreedhara and R. N. Roy
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India.
Abstract
Non-premixed flame plays a major role in the performance and emission characteristics of gas turbines, internal
combustion engines and industrial furnaces. Accurate modelling is necessary to capture turbulence-chemistry
interaction and to predict the temperature and species mass fractions. Further, stringent emission norms
demand higher accuracy of these predictions. In this article, necessity of advanced combustion models to
capture experimental data obtained at higher turbulence levels, has been highlighted. Two test cases, a bluff-
body flame and a lifted turbulent flame have been chosen to demonstrate the superiority of the advanced
combustion models. Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) is a promising combustion model which solves the
governing equations in the mixture fraction field. Closure model is not required for the reaction rate term, which
is one of the major advantages of this model. In the first test case, CMC predictions are benchmarked against the
experimental data obtained through bluff-body flame at very high turbulence levels. Improved predictions are
obtained using CMC compared to that obtained from basic models based on average values. The gap between
the predictions from CMC and basic models were more prominent at higher turbulence levels where extinction
and re-ignition occur. The second test case, a turbulent lifted flame in a vitiated coflow, is a more complex
flame to model as the flame lifts off from the nozzle tip, resulting in a partially premixed scenario. In this case,
even the CMC model on its own could not capture the behavior of the lifted flame. Hence, to improve the
predictions from CMC, an extinction model has been included, referred to as CMCE. In the CMCE model, the
flame is assumed to be extinguished when the ratio of flow time scale to the chemical time scale falls below a
critical value. Predicted lift-off height by the CMCE model agrees very well with the experimental results. There
is a significant improvement in temperature and species distributions in both axial and radial directions with the
implementation of the CMCE model. Further, the model is extended to predict the flame lift-off height for
various coflow temperatures and jet velocities by using scaling ratios.
Keywords: Non-premixed flame; Turbulence-chemistry interaction; Conditional moment closure; Bluff-body
flame; Lifted flame; Extinction model.
1. Introduction

Combustion process in gas turbine or internal
combustion engine involves non-premixed flames
subjected to high turbulence. In some cases the
flame is anchored on to the fuel nozzle and in some
other cases the flame gets stabilized further
downstream of the nozzle exit. Lifted flame
enhances the life of the nozzle, by reducing thermal
stresses on the nozzle tip. Turbulent lifted jet
diffusion flame can generally be observed when the
velocity of the fuel jet discharging into surrounding
hot or cold air surroundings exceeds beyond a
critical value. Turbulence-chemistry interaction
cannot be neglected in these situations and some of
the existing combustion models generally fail to give
good predictions of these flame structures. Hence,
advanced combustion models are needed to model
non-premixed flame existing at high turbulence
levels. Various modelling approaches have been
proposed previously to capture the behavior of these
types of flames [1]. With basic combustion models,
accurate prediction of flame structure, such as radial
and axial distributions of temperature and species
mass fractions becomes difficult [2].

Two flames are considered here for benchmarking
the combustion models. They are the bluff-body
flame and the lifted flame as shown in Fig. 1.

(a) (b)

Figure 1. Schematic of (a) bluff-body flame and (b) lifted
flame in a vitiated coflow
CMC has been recognized as a promising method
with sound theoretical background and accuracy at a
reasonable cost in diverse engineering problems [3,
4]. Conditionally averaged equations, in the mixture
fraction field, require modelling of some conditional
terms such as conditional velocity and scalar
dissipation rate, but do not invoke any arbitrary
assumption regarding the structure of a local flame.
Thus the reaction rate term becomes a closed term in
the mixture fraction field. The first-order closure
Corresponding author: S. Sreedhara
E-mail address: sreedhara.s@iitb.ac.in
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
(CMC I) evaluates the conditional mean reaction
rate in terms of the conditional average species mass
fractions and temperature, whereas in the second-
order closure (CMC II), conditional variance and
covariance equations are also solved to account for
higher conditional fluctuations.
Conditional moment closure models have
successfully been employed in a wide range of
problems including a highly transient autoignition
phenomenon in a non-premixed medium [5-7]. The
behaviors of turbulent jet flames were well captured
by parabolic first-order CMC in the axial direction
[8-13]. Second-order CMC was implemented for a
few rate-limiting steps of methane in a one-
dimensional parabolic formulation [14, 15]. Kim and
Huh [14] applied the second-order corrections to
study Sandia Flames D, E, and F [16] and obtained
significant improvement for OH, NO, and
intermediate species, CO and H
2
, as well.
Lifted flame in a vitiated coflow has been modelled
by many researchers. Premixed model was proposed
by Vanquickenborne and Tiggelen [17] consisting of
balance between local turbulent burning velocity and
local time averaged axial velocity which leads to
stabilization of a lifted flame. Ignoring the partial
premixing of air and fuel upstream of the flame
base, Peters and Williams [18] argued that
quenching of laminar diffusion flamelets results in
stabilization of lifted flame. The reaction zones
shifts to the downstream locations where the value
of scalar dissipation rate is not high enough to
extinguish the flame. Later, Peters [19]
acknowledged the fact that stabilization at the lift-off
height occurs due to premixed flame propagation
theory and not by diffusion flamelet quenching. To
support this Watson et al. [20] carried out
measurements of scalar dissipation rate for lifted
flame using laser Rayleigh scattering for wide range
of Reynolds numbers. It was found that
instantaneous scalar dissipation rates were not high
enough to cause extinction. Chen and Bilger [21]
found that scalar dissipation rates at the lifted flame
base along the stoichiometric mixture fraction were
1/s for propane flame and 0.24/s for methane flame.
These values were far below the calculated
extinction scalar dissipation rate.
Broadwell et al. [22] formulated the stabilization
mechanisms and blowout criteria for turbulent
diffusion flames based on large eddy theory. Due to
entrainment of hot combustion products and air into
the fuel-rich jet by large scale structures,
stabilization of lifted flame takes place; a blowout
criterion was deduced for various fuels based on
these large scale structures. A new variant of this
large eddy model was examined by Kelman et al.
[23] using simultaneous laser imaging of Rayleigh
scattering, Raman scattering and OH-LIF. These
large scale turbulent structures draw air into the jet,
around the base of the reaction zone which makes
the mixture too lean to sustain reaction at the flame
base and extinction begins to occur.
Experimental tests using cinema-PIV were carried
out by Upatnieks et al. [24] on methane jet diffusion
flames for low Reynolds numbers (4300-8500) to
identify the dominant mechanisms for flame
stabilization. Turbulent intensities at the flame base
were measured and suggested that it was not a
dominant parameter for flame stabilization. The
large eddy theory also does not fall in line with the
experimental results.
An extinction model, based on the assumption of
quenching of flame where Damkhler number (Da)
is less than unity was proposed by many researchers
[25-26] and was tested for different fuels. Devaud
and Bray [27] implemented first-order radially
averaged CMC on lifted hydrogen-air flame. The
study does not include the effect of heat release on
turbulent flow field. The first-order radially
averaged CMC can provide satisfactory results for
lifted jet flames. This work was extended by Kim
and Mastorakos [28] by implementing two-
dimensional first-order CMC to calculate lift-off
height and found a reasonable agreement with the
experimental data. Patwardhan et al. [29] carried out
CMC simulations of lifted turbulent jet flame
(H
2
/N
2
) in a vitiated coflow. The prediction obtained
from CMC for the reactive scalars and the
temperature were better than that from PDF
combustion model. The study suggests that for high
coflow temperatures, flame gets stabilized by auto-
ignition phenomena, as the convection-diffusion-
reaction (CDR) budgets indicate a balance between
convection and reaction terms at the upstream of the
flame base. Whereas, for low coflow temperatures,
flame gets stabilized by the turbulent flame
propagation theory, as the principal balance was
between convection and diffusion terms. Numerical
simulations of lifted methane-air flame in a vitiated
coflow based on RANS solvers for flow field,
coupled with PDF modelling [30, 31] indicate that
auto-ignition is the controlling mechanism for the
flame stabilization. Results of LES based unsteady
flamelet/progress variable model, developed by
Ihme and See [32] supports the autoignition theory
for the flame stabilization. Recent LES-CMC studies
[33, 34] on series of lifted flames indicate that flame
gets stabilized by auto-ignition phenomena for high
coflow temperature. It is claimed in Ref. [33] that
RANS based models fail to capture the flame base
dynamics and information on the temporal variation
of lift-off height is lost whereas unsteady effects
may be modelled accurately using LES. Devaud et
al. [35] carried out CMC simulations of lifted
turbulent methane-air flame and found that the lift-
off heights were highly underpredicted. Second-
order CMC resulted in improved predictions of lift-
off height, but only by around 10% [36].
The major objective of this article is to test the
applicability of CMC for modelling a bluff-body
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
flame and a lifted methane flame in a vitiated coflow
[37] using the detailed kinetic mechanism. In case of
a bluff-body, it was intended to obtain improved
predictions for species mass fractions at high
turbulence level compared to that obtained from the
basic combustion models [2]. For the lifted flame,
several investigators [for e.g. 19-21] suggested that
scalar dissipation rates were not high enough to
cause extinction at the flame base. So the authors
wanted to include an extinction criterion based on
the ratio of mixing to chemical time scale, motivated
by the previous attempt [26], to the conventional
CMC model to capture the lift-off height accurately.
The study was then extended to characterize the lift-
off height for different coflow temperatures and jet
velocities by proposing certain scaling ratios.
2. Mathematical formulations
Governing equations used in CMC calculations are
given in this section. The conditional mean mass
fraction Q
i
of species i is defined as
( ) ( ) ( ) , , , ,
i i
Q x t Y x t x t q q = = (1)
Angular brackets in Eq. (1) denote ensemble
averaging subject to the condition to the right of the
vertical bar. Y
i
is mass fraction of species i, the
sample space variable for the mixture fraction . x is
spatial coordinate and t is time. The instantaneous
mass fraction is decomposed into its Favre
conditional mean and its fluctuation, given as in [4]
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
''
, , , , ,
i i i
Y x t Q x t x t Y x t = + (2)
The governing equation for conditional mean
quantity is written as [4]

( )
( )
( )
'' ''
2
2
1
1

2
i i
i i i
i i
i
i
Q Q
u P u Y
t x x P
Q
q q q
q
e q
_ q
q
q
c c c
+ +
c c c
c
= +
c
(3)
''
i
u and
"
i
Y are conditional fluctuations of velocity and
mass fraction of the ith species respectively. The
PDF ( ) P q is assumed to have a -function form. The
conditional velocity is approximated as [38]

( )
" "
'' 2
i
i i
u
u u

q q

= + (4)
The conditional scalar dissipation rate is modelled
by amplitude mapping closure [39]
( )
2
-1
0.5 exp 2 erf 2 1 _ q _ q q
| |
(
= =
|

\ .
(5)

( )
1
2
-1
0
0.5
exp 2 erf 2 1 d
_
_ q
q q
= =
| |
(

|

\ .
}
(6)
The mean chemical source term is approximated
using first-order CMC. The conditional mean
radiative loss is estimated using the optically thin
assumption [40, 41].
3. Extinction model coupled with CMC
In this section, an extinction model incorporated into
the conditional moment closure model for the
improved prediction of lift-off height has been
proposed. The model consists of two time scales,
flow and chemical time scales. Flow time scale is
defined as the reciprocal of the scalar dissipation
rate and is given by

1
f
t
_
= (7)
Chemical time scale depends on the reaction rates
and in this paper, it is taken as reciprocal of the
reaction rate of a particular species.

c
i

t
e
= (8)
Where
i
e is the mean reaction rate of the i
th
species.
According to this model, in the computational
domain, local flame extinction is said to be occurred
when the local flow time scale in the flow field is
smaller than the chemical time scale by a factor. The
unconditional mean reaction rate for a specific
species in the physical domain
i
e , was obtained by
Favre PDF weighted conditional reaction rate
i
e q and is given by,
( )
1
0
i i
P d e e q q q =
}
(9)
The reaction rates, thus obtained, were utilized to
determine the chemical time scales. The computed
chemical time scale for a particular species is then
compared with the flow time scale at each of the
physical grid points. The conditional reaction rates
( )
''
i
e q for all species are set to zero if
i
f c c f
CS S t t s .
Here S
c
and S
f
are the scaling ratios to accommodate
the change in coflow temperature and jet velocity
respectively. Constant C is taken as 0.68 by
matching the lift-off height for a particular test case
by keeping both scaling ratios as unity. About 5%
variation in the value of C has changed the lift-off
height by around 10%. The flame lift-off height is
quite sensitive to the model constant C. The reaction
rate of CO is considered here for obtaining the
chemical time scale as it is one of the important
intermediate species. An attempt was made to define
the chemical time scale based on the species OH; the
methodology works well but with a different value
of C. On the other hand if /
i
f c c f
CS S t t > then the
conditional reaction rates are calculated as per the
CMC approach.
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
The approach taken in this study to predict lift-off
heights for change in coflow temperature is similar
to the model proposed by Kumar et al. [26]. As the
coflow temperature decreases, the lift-off height
increases because of changed reaction rate due to
change in temperature. However, this increase in
lift-off was much smaller than that observed in the
experimental data. Therefore, a scaling factor was
needed to capture the variations in lift-off height
with decreased coflow temperature. The scaling
ratio for change in coflow temperature is calculated
from the following equation


( )
( )
,
,
/
/
a u stoich base
a u stoich new
E R T
c
E R T
e
S
e

| |
|
=
|
|
\ .
(10)

where T
stoich,base
and T
stoich,new
are the temperatures at
the stoichiometric mixture fraction corresponding to
base and new case respectively. Temperatures at the
stoichiometric mixture fraction are estimated from
the equilibrium solution. The coflow temperature of
1350 K is taken as the base case. The effect of
change in coflow temperature is accounted by the
exponential terms. The term E
a
(activation energy) is
considered for the reaction which is having slowest
CO oxidation rate in the reaction mechanism. The
reaction is given as


2 2
O CO O CO + + (11)

The activation energy for the above reaction is 200
MJ/kmol. The above reaction is very slow and hence
the chemical time scale becomes important.

With an increase in the jet velocity, the flame lift-off
height does not increase in the same proportion, as
overprediction of the lift-off height at lower jet
velocities and underprediction at higher velocities
were observed by Kumar et al. [26]. Similar
observations were found in our preliminary
simulations. Hence, to determine a flow time scale
for change in jet velocity turbulent parameter should
be included in the extinction model [26]. So in the
present study, change in maximum mixture fraction
variance in the whole domain has been taken into
account for the change in jet velocity. Therefore, the
scaling ratio for change in jet velocity is determined
by the following relationship.


( )
( )
'' 2
max
'' 2
max
base
f
new
S

= (12)
where
( )
'' 2
max base
and
( )
'' 2
max new
are the maximum
mixture fraction variance corresponding to the base
and a new case respectively. The jet velocity of 100
m/s is considered as the base case velocity. In the
rest of the sections, the extinction model in the CMC
is referred as CMCE model.
4. Numerical simulation and boundary conditions
Simulations were carried out to investigate the
CH
4
/H
2
bluff-body flames with different jet
velocities. The diameter (D
B
) of the bluff-body is 50
mm and that of the fuel jet is 3.6 mm. CH
4
and H
2

are mixed in the volume ratio of 1:1, which results in
the stoichiometric mixture fraction of 0.0498. The
jet velocities are 118, 178, and 214 m/s,
respectively, for the flames HM1, HM2, and HM3.
The coflow air velocity is 40 m/s. The Reynolds
numbers based on the jet diameter and inlet jet
velocities are 15,800, 23,900, and 28,700,
respectively, for HM1, HM2, and HM3. Inlet
boundary conditions are given as reported in Dally
et al. [42]. The steady-state flow and mixing fields
were calculated by a program based on the SIMPLE
algorithm with the k model. To compensate for
excessive diffusion by the standard k model the
constant, C
1
, was modified to 1.6 from its standard
value of 1.44. The numbers of control volumes were
taken as 70 and 50, respectively, in the axial and
radial directions. The resulting steady flow field was
used in CMC simulation to obtain the steady-state
solution for local conditional flame structures.
Weaker spatial dependence of conditional mean
quantities allows a coarser spatial grid of 20 10 in
the axial and radial directions. Sensitivity on grid
resolution was checked with no noticeable
difference in the results with a finer spatial grid of
40 10. Detailed kinetic mechanism of GRI Mech
2.11 was used to calculate reaction rates. The
upwind technique is used in transport steps, whereas
the stiff solvers of CHEMKIN are called during
chemical reaction steps.

In case of a lifted flame, the experimental data
obtained by Cabra et al. [37] is used for the
modelling purpose. In their setup, a fuel jet
consisting of a CH
4
/air (d = 4.57 mm) was issued
into a hot surrounding consisting of products from
lean premixed H
2
/air flame. Fuel jet was having a
bulk velocity of 100 m/s and that of coflow was 5.4
m/s.
The flow and mixing fields were treated as
axisymmetric in nature and were calculated by fully
implicit finite-volume method using SIMPLE
algorithm incorporated in a 2-D in-house code.
Again, a variant of k- turbulence model was used to
predict the turbulence mixing accurately. To reduce
the rate of decay of turbulent kinetic energy, C
2
was
changed from 1.92 to 1.8 in the modified k-
turbulence model as done previously by Kumar and
Goel [25].
In the flow solver, the Favre-averaged form of
momentum, pressure, turbulent kinetic energy, eddy
dissipation, mixture fraction and its variance
equations were solved. The closure of mean density
term was achieved using -PDF. The details of
computational domain are shown in Fig. 2.
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
At the jet inlet (nozzle exit) fully developed velocity
profile [37] was supplied to the solver, where the
velocity distribution is assumed to be related to the
bulk velocity via 1/7
th
power law.

Figure 2. Diagram of the computational domain

where y is the distance in the radial direction and r is
the radius of the jet. Uniform velocity profile was
considered for coflow boundaries. The turbulent
intensity was set equal to 15% of the inlet flow
velocity. Adiabatic wall boundary was provided at
the outer part of the domain. Numbers of control
volumes taken in the computational domain were
315 and 150 respectively in axial and radial
direction, based on the grid independent study. No
significant differences were observed with further
refinement of grids.
The solution methodology as given in Fig. 3 is
described below. Principal reaction mechanism for
CH
4
combustion used here is GRI1.2 mainly to
reduce the computational effort. Steady flamelet
equations were solved for the boundary condition
given in Ref. [37]. The mixture fraction space in
SLFM solver was divided into 50 grid points with
denser grids around stoichiometric mixture fraction.
Fully burnt solutions, corresponding to near zero
scalar dissipation rate, obtained by solving steady
flamelet equations were used as initial conditions for
CMC simulations. Flow field information was
passed onto the CMC solver to obtain steady
conditional flame structure as shown in Fig. 3. The
effect of density variation on the flow-field is taken
into account. Flow simulations were started with
cold density, but updated densities at each grid
points were provided using CMC solutions. Flow
and CMC simulations were coupled by running them
one after the other for several cycles till the steady
state results were obtained as shown in Fig. 3.



Figure 3. Schematic of solution methodology

The physical space in the CMC solver was
discretized into 50 and 38 grids in axial and radial
direction respectively. Each physical grid point
consists of 50 mixture fraction grids concentrated
near the stoichiometric mixture fraction. Both CMC
and CMCE models were initialized using fully burnt
solutions obtained by solving Flamelet equations.
The fractional step method was used to solve CMC
equations, where the terms for transport and
chemical reaction were solved in a separate
fractional step. The stiff ODE solver VODE was
employed for chemical reaction steps.
5. Results and Discussion
Results obtained from basic combustion models on
bluff-body flames were compared and discussed in
the TNF workshop [2]. The numerical results
obtained showed a significant discrepancy with
experimental data [42, 43], particularly for the flame
with the highest jet velocity (HM3) as shown in Fig.
4. Huge deviation from the data may be observed
particularly for NO mass fraction. Post-processed
data [43] showed significant local extinction in HM3
which is having highest Reynolds number among the
three flames tested. The basic combustion models
based on the averaged values could not capture the
experimental data very well because of this local
extinction.




Figure 4. Predictions from basic combustion models
compared against experimental data

Sreedhara and Huh [44], applied CMC second-order
method to model bluff-body flame and to obtain
improved results for the above said species
concentrations. Initially mixing field was compared
against the experimental data by comparing mean
and variance of mixture fraction at various locations
of the flame. Two locations (x/D
b
=1.8 and 2.4),
where the local extinction is more, were chosen for
the comparison purpose. Mean and variance of
mixture fractions at these locations matched
reasonably well with the experimental data as shown
in Fig. 5. This comparison may be improved by
implementing a better mixing model, for e.g. LES.
Flamelet solver
"2
, , , , , , u v p k c
Flow Solver
Combustion model
(CMC)

,
i
T Y
Steady state
, ,
i
T Y
Initial
condition
0
2
4
6
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
C
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
x/D
b
= 1.8
0
2
4
6
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
C
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
x/D
b
= 2.4
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
N
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
x/D
b
= 1.8
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
N
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
x/D
b
= 2.4
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013

Figure 5. Comparison of radial distributions of Favre
mean and root mean square fluctuation of mixture fraction
with measurements (symbol: measurement; line:
prediction)
These parameters are crucial in calculating the
probability density function (PDF) of the mixture
fraction field. PDF in turn required for converting
CMC results, obtained in the mixture fraction field,
into physical space results.
Some of the results are given here, but for the details
of other results readers are directed to refer
Sreedhara and Huh [44]. Improved predictions of
NO from CMC compared to that from the basic
combustion models given in TNF proceedings [2], at
two axial locations, are shown in Fig. 6. It may be
seen clearly from the Fig. 6 that the NO predictions
from CMC are very close to the experimental data. It
may also be observed from Fig. 6 that a significant
amount of improvement is obtained in the
predictions compared to that from the basic models.
This may attributed to the fact that turbulence-
chemistry interaction is captured well in CMC.

Figure 6. Comparison of radial distributions of NO mass
fractions by CMC and basic combustion models with
measurements
Improved results are obtained for the species mass
fractions of CO and OH also and are shown in Figs.
7 and 8. The minor deviations in the predictions of
mass fractions from the experimental data observed
in Figs. 6-8 may be attributed to the inaccurate PDF
obtained from the mixing field. PDF may be
improved by incorporating a better mixing model.

Figure 7. Comparison of radial distributions of CO mass
fractions by CMC model with measurements


Figure 8. Comparison of radial distributions of OH mass
fractions by CMC model with measurements

As a next step, the CMC has been employed to
model the lifted methane flame existing in a vitiated
coflow. Lift-off heights predicted by CMC for
different jet velocities underpredicted the
experimental results by a huge factor as shown in
Fig. 9. However, lift-off height is increasing with the
increase in jet velocity i.e. CMC is capturing the
trend of lift-off height but fails to capture the
absolute value of the lift-off height by a large factor.
In CMC simulations, the flame extinguishes because
of very high scalar dissipation rate. As observed by
many researchers [19-21] at the flame base of the
lifted flame, scalar dissipation rates are not high
enough to cause extinction; hence the lift-off height
is underpredicted in Fig. 9. To overcome this issue,
it was planned to incorporate an extinction model in
the CMC to take care of extinction even when the
scalar dissipation rates are not so high. Extinction
model coupled with CMC is referred here as CMCE.


Figure 9. Comparison of lift-off heights for different cases
with CMC

Results obtained from both the CMC and the CMCE
models are presented below. Prediction of the
turbulent mixing field accurately is important in
modelling turbulent combustion because it has a
strong influence on turbulence-chemistry
interactions. Fig. 10 shows the Favre mean and root
mean square (r.m.s) mixture fraction along the
centreline predicted by both SKE and MKE
turbulence models. The figure includes both the
experimental [37] and the computational results.
Mean mixture fraction is underpredicted by the SKE
model, it also results in large overprediction of r.m.s
mixture fraction in the range 0 < x/d < 24.
Calculated mean mixture fractions and r.m.s mixture
fraction obtained from the MKE model are in good
agreement with the experimental data as shown in
Fig. 10. Thus, an excellent agreement is achieved for
the mixing field by changing the k- modelling
constants appropriately.
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
r
m
s

m
i
x
t
u
r
e

f
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
M
i
x
t
u
r
e

f
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
r/R
b
x/D
b
= 1.8
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
r
m
s

m
i
x
t
u
r
e

f
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
M
i
x
t
u
r
e

f
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
r/R
b
x/D
b
= 2.4
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
N
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
CMC
x/D
b
= 1.8
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
N
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
TNF[2]
TNF[2]
CMC
x/D
b
= 2.4
0
2
4
6
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
C
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
CMC
x/D
b
= 1.8
0
2
4
6
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
C
O

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
CMC
x/D
b
= 2.4
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
O
H

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
CMC
x/D
b
= 1.8
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2
Y
O
H

(
%
)
r/R
b
Expt
CMC
x/D
b
= 2.4
0
20
40
60
80
Case1 Case2 Case3
L
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-
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f

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(
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/
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)
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CMC
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013

Figure 10. Comparisons of centerline Favre mean and
root mean square fluctuation of mixture fraction with
measurements

In Fig. 11 a comparison of the predicted Favre
average centerline temperature and species mass
fractions using the CMC and the CMCE models
with the experimental data are provided. One of the
important parameters of the lifted jet flame is the
centerline temperature. The temperature profile is
overpredicted in the range 10 < x/d < 60 by the
CMC model. However, predicted temperature from
the CMCE model matches well with the
experimental data as seen from Fig. 11. Further
downstream, for x/d > 60 both the models yield
almost identical results. The prediction for centerline
CH
4
mass fraction from the CMCE model matches
well with the experimental data. The prediction of
the CMC model is good up to an axial location of
x/d = 10 and then drops suddenly. In the
experiments, it is observed that CO
2
mass fractions
are very low up to x/d = 45 then increase abruptly.
Both CO
2
and O
2
mass fractions are predicted well
by the CMCE. Mean temperature contours obtained
using the CMC and the CMCE models are shown in
Fig. 12. The temperature field can clearly show the
lift-off height of the flame. Lift-off height obtained
using the CMC model is 2.5d and that using the
CMCE model is 34.5d. It may be noted that the
shape of the flame has not changed even after
implementing the extinction model. Smooth
centerline profiles and unchanged flame shape in
Figs. 11 and 12 ensure that no numerical issues
caused due to the inclusion of the extinction model.



Figure 11. Centerline profiles for temperature and species
mass fractions


Figure 12. Mean temperature field (in K) for base case by
CMC and CMCE models
Favre average statistics are obtained by averaging
the conditional statistics with the -PDF over the
entire mixture fraction space. Therefore, the
predicted accuracy of Favre averaged statistics
depends on the accuracy of both the PDF of the
mixture fraction and the conditional statistics. The
quantities, Favre mean temperature and species mass
fractions are compared with the experimental data in
Fig. 13 for the axial location x/d = 30. Figure 13
shows that the mean temperature profile obtained
using the CMC model is overpredicted by a
significant amount. On the other hand, the
predictions of the temperature profile in the pre-
flame zone from the CMCE model are considerably
much better. Further, the CMC model predicts rapid
consumption of CH
4
and O
2
mass fractions at this
axial location, resulting in increase in production of
CO
2
mass fraction. The radial distributions of all
scalar quantities are well captured by the CMCE
model. The predictions of conditional mean values
by the CMCE model for temperature and reactive
scalars and Favre average statistics at other axial
locations are provided in Roy et al. [45].



Figure 13. Comparison of Favre mean temperature and
mass fractions of CH
4
, CO
2
and O
2
with measurements at
x/d = 30
The variation of lift-off height with coflow
temperature and jet velocity were investigated and
compared with the experimental measurements.
With the change in coflow temperature, reaction
0.00
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0.80
1.00
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x/d
Expt
MKE
SKE
0.00
0.04
0.08
0.12
0.16
0 20 40 60 80 100
r
.
m
.
s

m
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x
t
u
r
e

f
r
a
c
t
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x/d
Expt
MKE
SKE
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
0 20 40 60 80 100
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
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(
K
)
x/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
5
10
15
20
25
0 20 40 60 80 100
C
H
4
(
%
)
x/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
2
4
6
8
10
0 20 40 60 80 100
C
O
2
(
%
)
x/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
5
10
15
20
25
0 20 40 60 80 100
O
2
(
%
)
x/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
h/d
h/d
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
0 3 6 9 12 15
T
e
m
p
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r
a
t
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(
K
)
r/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
2
4
6
8
0 3 6 9 12 15
C
H
4
(
%
)
r/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
2
4
6
8
10
0 3 6 9 12 15
C
O
2
(
%
)
r/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
0
4
8
12
16
20
0 3 6 9 12 15
O
2
(
%
)
r/d
Expt
CMC
CMCE
23
rd
National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
rates change and hence the lift-off. Changed coflow
temperature changes the value of scaling ratio (S
c
)
and this enables the CMCE model to capture the
change in lift-off height. The flame shifts towards
downstream locations with decrease in coflow
temperatures, indicating the higher flame lift-off. To
demonstrate the quality of prediction of flame lift-
off heights with change in coflow temperature by the
proposed model, present results are compared, in
Fig. 14, with the measured lift-off heights. Results
from other numerical models available in the
literature are also shown in Fig. 14. Cabra et al. [37]
carried out PDF calculations with M-Curl and Well-
Mixed (W-M) mixing models to predict the flame
lift-off height at different coflow temperatures. The
lift-off heights were underpredicted by Well-Mixed
model, whereas the M-Curl model predicted the lift-
off height very close to experimental data. The
model proposed by Kalghatgi [46] also significantly
underpredicts the lift-off heights. However, earlier
numerical predictions by PDF [31] and LES-CMC
[33] models show a good agreement with
experimental data. It may be observed from Fig. 14
that the lift-off heights predicted by the CMCE
model match very well with the experimental data
and other predictions [31, 33] both qualitatively and
quantitatively.
Figure 15 shows the comparison of the lift-off
heights predicted by the CMCE model, at different
jet velocities (varied from 100 m/s to 250 m/s) with
measured and predicted results from M-Curl model
[37]. In the CMCE model, value of scaling ratio (S
f
)
changes with change in jet velocities, which enables
the model to capture the change in lift-off height.
The predicted trend obtained for the lift-off height
by the proposed CMCE model compares well with
the experimental data. From Figs. 14 and 15 it may
be concluded that the new model can predict the lift-
off height very accurately for large variations of
coflow temperatures and jet velocities.


Figure 14. Comparisons of measured and predicted lift-off
height with change in coflow temperature


Figure 15. Comparisons of measured and predicted lift-off
height with change in jet velocity
6. Conclusions
In the present article, Conditional Moment Closure
(CMC) model has been benchmarked against the
experimental data related to bluff-body flame and
lifted flame. Mixing field is obtained using a
modified k-c model. CMC predictions of bluff-body
flame structure were found to be superior to that
from the basic combustion models. For modelling
the lifted methane flame in a vitiated coflow, flow
and scalar fields are fully coupled. The original
CMC model is modified by including an extinction
model to accurately capture the lift-off height.
Capabilities of CMC and CMCE models to predict
the scalar field and lift-off height are compared
against the experimental data. The CMC model
overpredicts the centerline temperature field by a
large amount resulting in an underprediction of the
lift-off height. The predicted lift-off height with the
CMCE model is found to be in good agreement with
the experimental measurements. As a result,
significant improvement in centerline and radial
profiles of various scalars has been observed with
the CMCE model. Further investigations related to
the effect of change in coflow temperature and
change in jet velocity on the lift-off height reveal
that the proposed model, CMCE, can capture the
experimental data of lift-off heights, both
qualitatively and quantitatively for large variations
of coflow temperatures and jet velocities.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to the Aeronautics Research
and Development Board (AR&DB), Govt. of India
for funding this research work.
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National Conference on I. C. Engine and Combustion (NCICEC 2013)
SVNIT, Surat, India
13-16, December 2013
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