Computations

Reacting Flows Computational Research

Ongoing reacting flows computational research includes a range of activities to address computational and analysis challenges in hydrocarbon-air flames. Efficient codes have been developed for computations of flames with detailed chemical kinetic models in 2D rectangular/axisymmetric flow. This includes both uniform and adaptive-mesh refinement codes that employ both distributed and shared memory parallelism, allowing optimal computational hardware use.

These tools have been used to study a range of reacting flows, including flame-vortex interaction, edge flames, and laminar jet flames, with hydrocarbon fuels such as methane, propane, n-heptane, and iso-octane. Moreover, CRF researchers have developed a flexible thermochemistry toolkit (TChem), useful for homogeneous chemical studies. Also, computational singular perturbation (CSP) tools are developed and used for analysis of resulting reacting flow databases, and for associated development of reduced chemical models. Moreover, CSP is used in efficient adaptive time integration approaches for chemical models of complex hydrocarbon fuels, employing tabulation of CSP analysis information. The Computational Facility for Reacting Flows Science performs work on both adaptive mesh refinement and CSP tabulation.

Broadly, these evolving computational and analysis capabilities enable targeted reacting flow studies resulting in enhanced understanding of laboratory-scale reacting flows with complex fuels.