Analysis of the laminar flamelet concept for nonpremixed laminar flames

The goal of this paper is to investigate the application of the laminar flamelet concept to the multidimensional numerical simulation of nonpremixed laminar flames. The performance of steady and unsteady flamelets is analyzed. The deduction of the mathematical formulation of flamelet modeling is exposed and some commonly used simplifications are examined. Different models for the scalar dissipation rate dependence on the mixture fraction variable are analyzed. Moreover, different criteria to evaluate the Lagrangian-type flamelet lifetime for unsteady flamelets are investigated. Inclusion of phenomena such as differential diffusion with constant Lewis number for each species and radiation heat transfer are also studied. A confined co-flow axisymmetric nonpremixed methane/air laminar flame experimentally investigated by McEnally and Pfefferle (Combust. Sci. Technol. 116–117 (1996) 183–209) and numerically investigated by Bennett, McEnally, Pfefferle, and Smooke (Combust. Flame 123 (2000) 522–546), Cònsul, Pérez-Segarra, Claramunt, Cadafalch, and Oliva (Combust. Theory Modelling 7 (3) (2003) 525–544), and Claramunt, Cònsul, Pérez-Segarra, and Oliva (Combust. Flame 137 (2004) 444–457) has been used as a test case. Results obtained using the flamelet concept have been compared to data obtained from the full resolution of the complete transport equations using primitive variables. Finite-volume techniques over staggered grids are used to discretize the governing equations. A parallel multiblock algorithm based on domain decomposition techniques running with loosely coupled computers has been used. To assess the quality of the numerical solutions presented in this paper, a verification process based on the generalized Richardson extrapolation technique and on the grid convergence index (GCI) has been applied.