Volume 29: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part IV

Numerical Study on the flow field of a combustor with triple swirlers Chang Liu, Peng Qian, Zizhen Huang, Zhiwei Chen, Kai Han, Jialei Zhang, Wenjing Zhang, Minghou Liu

Abstract

This paper conducts a numerical study on the characteristics of mean flow field of a combustor with triple swirlers with focus on the effect of turbulence models on the central recirculation zone (CRZ). By comparing numerical results with high-speed photography experiment, it is found that k-ε RNG model can better predict the flow field characteristics than k-ε realizable and k- ω SST model. the CRZ length and expansion angle obtained by k-ε RNG model are consistent with experiments, and k-ε Realizable model are relatively close to it, while k-ω SST model is quite different from the two others. The results predicted by k-ω SST have much higher backflow strength and pressure gradient. The study is of great significance to reasonably choice turbulent mode to predict swirling flow in a combustor.

Keywords triple swirler; recirculation zone; turbulence model; Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes