Vortex Flame Interactions

Vortex-flame interactions are building blocks of turbulent combustion. At the fundamental level, the interaction of an isolated vortex with a laminar flame can provide insight into the effects of unsteady strain and flame curvature on turbulent reacting flows. The relative importance of these effects is a key feature of turbulent combustion models. Vortex-flame interactions are studied in both nonpremixed and premixed burners. In each burner the impulsive motion of a loudspeaker is used to create very repeatable, isolated vortex pairs that interact with the laminar reaction zone. Phase-locked measurements, using several laser-based techniques, are used to track the dynamics of the interaction. These experiments are closely tied to numerical simulations, in which detailed chemical kinetics are coupled with full solution of the flow field. One important result from studies to date is that the unsteady response of detailed chemical mechanisms does not match the measured response of CH and OH as the vortex pair interacts with a premixed laminar flame.
Contacts: Jonathan Frank, Bob Schefer, and Habib Najm

Forced planar jet apparatus		Image sequence from a forced planar nonpremixed jet flame
Premixed V-flame apparatus		Simultaneous OH PLIF and Mie scattering images