Proceedings of

2000 International Joint Power Generation Conference

Miami Beach, Florida, July 23-26, 2000

IJPGC2000-15064

AN EDDY CHARACTERISTIC TIME MODELING IN LES FOR GAS TURBINE COMBUSTOR

Mitsuru Yaga
Kousuke Sasada
Tohoku University
Tohoku University
Department of Chemical Engineering
Department of Chemical Engineering
07, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku
07, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku
Sendai 980-8579
Sendai 980--8579
Japan
Japan
TEL:+81-22-217-7252, FAX:+81-22-217-6165
TEL:+81-22-217-7252, FAX:+81-22-217-6165
Tsuyoshi Yamamoto
Hideyuki Aoki
Takatoshi Miura
Tohoku University
Tohoku University
Tohoku University
Department of Chemical
Department of Chemical
Department of Chemical
Engineering
Engineering
Engineering
07, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku
07, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku
07, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku
Sendai 980-8579
Sendai 980-8579
Sendai 980-8579
Japan
Japan
Japan
TEL:+81-22-217-7252,
TEL:+81-22-217-7251,
TEL:+81-22-217-7250,
FAX:+81-22-217-6165
FAX:+81-22-217-6165
FAX:+81-22-217-6165

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

For calculating turbulent flame characteristics such as

temperature and chemical species in the gas turbine combustor,
an effort applying Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to a
combustion simulation has been made in recent years.
However, there is no established method of estimating reaction
rate on LES combustion simulation. In this paper, we construct
an eddy characteristic time derived from large-scale motion to
calculate the combustion reaction rate using an eddy
dissipation concept model (EDC) and estimate combustion
characteristics (temperature and chemical species distribution)
in the combustor for the purpose of solving fundamental
problems of gas turbine combustor such as swirling effect or
formation of pollutant products. As a result, it is shown that
the combustion simulation using LES with EDC model is
effective method to calculate the characteristics of turbulent
diffusion flame such as gas turbine combustor.

In order to construct a new combustor, scaling up of the

furnace usually advances in order of laboratory-, batch-, pilotand commercial-scale. Since this method needs much cost and
time, a method of using simulations adjusted on the
commercial furnace is recommended to predict the
characteristics of combustion. On the other hand, it is usually
said that experiments are better than the simulations to predict
characteristics of combustion. However, it is difficult to
measure the characteristics of combustion such as temperature
and chemical compounds even in the case of experiment and
the data include unavoidable errors, because the characteristics
of combustion are complicated in high temperature condition.
So the need of established combustion simulation model is
earnestly desired. The simulation model is available for 1)
scaling up of the furnace, 2) development of new combustor
purposing reduction of pollutant formation and adjustment on
various fuels and 3) search of reasonable operation condition.
The simulation model is, furthermore, expected as an effective
technology to adjust various needs in future. Nowadays, from
the view of saving energy and reducing amount of discharged
environmental pollution substances, the importance of
controlling combustion phenomena hasincreased. We may not

KEYWORDS
Large Eddy Simulation, Combustion, Eddy Dissipation
Concept Model, Eddy Characteristic Time, Three Step Global
Reaction Mechanisms

Copyright 2000 by ASME

i
[.y . .
[

. ,

,.

confirm the computational accuracy since the experiment is

very difficult to obtain a reliable data such as temperature and
chemical species distribution in a furnace.
Numerical
simulation of combustion phenomena is then very convenient
technique Until now, k- t two-equation turbulence model
(Launder, 1972) has been generally used to simulate the
engineering turbulent phenomena including combustion.
However, this model is known to have a defect that
approximation get worth for showing nonisotropic field such
as gas turbine combustor. DNS, one of the flow simulation
techniques, can considers micro-scale eddy motion while DNS
needs too many grids and short time marching to represent the
micro-scale eddy motion So it is very difficult to apply DNS
to furnace with large spatial scales Large Eddy Simulation
(Leonard, 1974) is a method of calculating large-scale flow
directly and subgrid-scale flow indirectly A feature of this
method is that subgrid-scale flow is modeled by the eddy
viscosity concept and viscosity is further modeled based on the
balance of energy production and dissipation of turbulent flow.
This method can thus save grids compared with DNS and can
catch an instantaneous large-scale eddy lnotion. In the abovementioned reason, an effort applying LES method to
combustion phenomena has been made in recent years (Cook
and Bushe, 1999). The problem is that there is no confirmed
combustion reaction model applied to LES.
While the
Probability Density Function (PDF) method is often used in
LES combustion simulation (MOller, et al., 1996), however it
lakes too much time to solve PDF at all cells This is the
reason why we adopt Eddy Dissipation Concept model (EDC)
as reaction model in this study. In the case that EDC is
applied to combustion simulation together with k- t 2-equation
model, it is easy to estimate an eddy characteristic time using
time averaged turbulent energy and eddy dissipation rate. As
contrasted with k- t 2-equation model, we can not easily
determine the eddy characteristic time in LES. We thus
develop the method to determine an eddy characteristic time to
be able to carry out LES combustion simulation using EDC.

radial distance [in]

t

: universal ~ , l l ~ t

Rij

' l~eynolds

Ri

~[m

of gases [J mol a K l l

i m ' ~ ~2 ]

chemical ~ b n

rate [tool m s

s'll

[s'll ',

Sij

strain rate

S,

volumetric source term of quantity 4~

time [sl

temperature IK]
velocity component in i direction [m s a]

axial velocity [ms "l]

radial velocity [m s"1]

tangential velocity [ms "l]

xi

coordinate'in i direction [m]

axial distance [m]

A filter width [m]

ce stoichiometric oxidant requirement to burn lkg of fuel [-]
8ij " Kronecker's delta [-]
e

eddy dissipation rate [m 2 s "3]

/1 viscosity [Pa s]

NOMENCLATURE
A : pre-exponential factor of rate constant [cm 3 mol l s ~ K l ]

kinematic molecular viscosity [m2 s l ]

vt " eddy viscosity [m S s"1]

Cs : Smagorinsky constant [-]
E

: Activation energy [J mol ~]

: filter function [-]

: enthalpy [J kg -l]

tangential angle [rad.]

density [kg m "3]

cr Schmidt number [-]

mi : mass fraction for species i [-]

F , " diffusion coefficient [-]

'pressure [Pa]

eddy characteristic tnne [s]

Copyright 2000 by ASME

Table 1 Source terms and diffusion coefficients for

govcrining Equations.

~ : generalized variable
or equivalence ratio [-]
Mass

Axial
momentum

/teff

of

d;) l o(

0;3 i o (

/~eff

of

o:] l o (

o;3 l o f

<subscripts>
Art

: Arrhenius

eff

: effective

eddy

: eddy mixing

fu

:fuel

Radial
momentum

"7"t,'~'~ 7 j
m

in

: inlet

ox

: oxidant

Tangential
momentum

ttff

,~,{

: spatial average

Mass

m"/

fraction
SIMULATION METHOD
Governino Eauation

(,o: ) + O---f/;: l+ !
Ox - -

"

l + '-

rot"

"

r O0 ~

I
"

(')

o+
oxk

o~)

fork

or)

rook

~oo)

t,o:,JJ,o:{

~w

OP

rO 0

,f

/5f1(o;

,ueff 2aR(Fx+Fr + F o - 3E)

oh

o;)]' f,(o= oZ312 h(o;

o=

=,~?l\

\+fo;q:+V;Lf o= +=)2
\ t~-J tTJ t,~ ;j

#eft --- #+/2t

'

where ff represents the dependent variables which denote the

mass (1), momentum (u, v, w), enthalpy (h) and mass fraction
(m~; i=CI-h, O~, CO~, 1-120, N~, CO and 1-12). F + is the
exchange coefficient, S# is the source term in the gas phase, p
is density, x, r and 0 are axial, radial and tangential coordinate,
respectively. Over bar means a spatial average. The source
terms and exchange coefficients are shown in Table 1. The
wall function model (Gosman and Pun, 1974) is applied to
calculate the flow near the wall. Radiative heat transfer is
calculated by 6-flux model (Gosman and Lockwood, 1972).

Oh

0.4

0.4

where G i ( x i , x ' i ) is a filtering function and dash means a

fluctuation. In this study, the Gaussian filter is used.
G(x,,x,0__ f-g7_exp(- 6(xi - x',Y)

VW--~" C

T~7 ) ,

Mathematical Modelino

Large eddy simulation (LES) is a method of solving

spatial-averaged Navier-Stokes equation. In this method,
dependent variables are divided into resolved scale and
subgrid-scale (SGS) by a filtering procedure. This procedure
is shown by following equation as:

(2)

(3)

where A is grid length. The dependent variable can be

decomposed as following equation:
=7+',

,~ ,,t J i = l

-:

~/

O'm

f f fo,

or

am

Enthalpy

All transport equations in this study can be expressed for

cylindrical three-dimensional geometry as:

t~eff

o=,31

o;) s<.nf o(~,) lo;/

o(

<superscripts>

og) o-~

(4)

After the filtering procedure operated on Navier-Stokes

equations, the Reynolds term R O. is appear. The Reynolds term
is modeled as follows (written in Cartesian geometry):
l
r
Ru = -~u,
u:r oS:-. & ,

(5)

1(0~ ag)

Copyright 2000 by ASME

where o~0is Kronecker's delta, vt is turbulent viscosity and S O.

is strain rate. Viscosity v t is further modeled as follows:

Considering both the chemical reaction and the eddy motion,

reaction rate is finally expressed as:

ff~ = -min~,a~,~),

where Cs represents the Smagorinsky constant and we assume

it as 0.2 (Smagorinsky, 1963).

Reaction Modelino
We use three step global reaction mechanisms to express
methane-air combustion reaction as:

CH4+0.502~CO+2H2,

(9)

(10)

CO+0.502~::~CO2,

H2+0.502~::~H20,

(11)

Because the methane-air (oxygen) overall reaction (CI-L+202

CO2+2H20), often adopted to the turbulent combustion
simulation for saving calculation time, can not represent CO
and HE which are formed in local fuel-rich region. To consider
the interaction between eddy motion and chemical reaction,
the eddy dissipation concept (EDC) model is used to express
the reaction rate (Magnussen and Hjertager, 1976) as:

p
(m-ox-- "1
= 4.0__mm/__,mr, oq
.

(12)

where A is pre-exponential factor of rate constant, E is

Activation energy, R is universal constant of gases and T is
temperature. The value of coefficients A, E, a and b are
referred from Jones (Jones and Lindstedt, 1988).

Numerical Solution
The SIMPLE algorithm with TDMA method (Patanker,
1980) is used to solve the partial differential equations shown
in (1). In this simulation, equations of continuity, momentum,
enthalpy and gas species mass fractions are discretized in
space by a control volume method. The convective terms are
differenced in space with the quadratic upstream interpolation
for convective kinematics method (Leonard, 1979) and the
diffusive terms are differenced in space with the second-order
central difference scheme. The fully implicit scheme is used
for time marching and time step is 0.05s. The schematic
diagram of computational domain is shown in Fig. 1. The
coaxial combustor has 200mm in internal diameter and
800mm in length. The inner pipe diameter is 6 5mm and the
annulus pipe diameter is ~ 23mm. A computational grid
number in axial, radial and tangential direction are 120 40 x
50, respectively.

1~

J'
where ~ is a stoichiometric oxidant requirement to burn lkg
of fuel, Reddyis eddy mixing rate of fuel and oxygen and ~ is
eddy characteristic time. The eddy characteristic time z is
estimated with considering Kolmogorov scale as below:
Air
where e is eddy dissipation rate. From the assumption that
turbulence energy generation and dissipation are locally equal,
eddy dissipation rate is written as below (written in Cartesian
geometry):

= ~ t.Ox-~x, -~-xj) '

(14)

Eq. (14) is substituted to Eq. (13), the eddy characteristic time

is finally expressed as below:
I"=

(15)

(16)

o-.

800

~[

. . . . . . . "~. . . . . ~.

l ~

....

JJ

......

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of computational domain.

The Schematic diagram of experimental setup is shown in

Fig. 2. This combustor has 200ram in diameter and 800mm in
length. The inner pipe diameter is ~ 5ram and the annulus
pipe diameter is ~ 23mm The experimental condition is
shown in Table 2. A flame temperature is measured by using
suction pyrometer probe equipped with R-type thermocouple.
Gases are sucked through a water-cooled sampling probe made
of stainless steel. The tip diameter of gas sampling probe is O
4.32mm. Intensive cooling starts at the joint of the probe tip

Copyright 2000 by ASME

with a water jacket cooling system where chemical reaction

halts. Sampling gases are analyzed by a gas chromatograph.

.amp.in . eWallo .o o

0.1 lml

Combustor
Air
CI%
Fig. 4 Calculated instantaneous eddy characteristic time
distribution in computational domain.

f\

ii2compro

Figure 5 shows the radial distribution of temperature in

the equivalence ratio ~ =1.0 at x=0.1m downstream from the
burner. From the Fig. 5, good agreements are seen except for
the centedine. The reason why thermocouple system indicates
exceed temperature is that the effect of radiation from suction
pyrometer tip is large.

/
Gas chromatograph

Methane cylinders

Fig 2 Schematic diagram of experimental setup.

1800

Table 2 Experimetal condition.

1600

[-]
CI-h [Nm3 h"l]
Air [Nm3 h a]
Temperature [K]
ReD [-]

1.0
0.20
1.90
293.15
33228

140o
~ 12oo
~ 100o
~ 800
w 600

Experiment
.......... LES

400
2OO

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 3 shows the predicted time mean velocity of
combustion gas flow. The line that axial velocity is zero is
plotted on Fig. 3. The strength of the vortex shedding is much
weaker by heat release, large-scale eddies are broken up
because thermal expansion occurs in the vortex core (Fureby
and L/ffstr0m, 1994).
Figure 4 shows the distribution of eddy characteristic time
calculated by the present model. The eddy characteristic time
in the region where CI-h and 02 are mixed is short and it is
expected that LES combustion simulation is carried out with
the strict assumption of eddy dissipation concept model. The
combustion reaction occurs at the moment that fuel and
oxygen are fully mixed in micro-scale eddy.

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

r/D [-I
Fig. 5 Radial distribution of temperature at 0. lm from
burner at ~ =1.0.
Figure 6 shows the radial distribution of CFL mole fraction
in the equivalence ratio 6=1.0 at x=0.1m downstream from
the burner. This calculation result ,agrees well with the
measured results of CH4 mole fraction.

[ o Experiment}1LEs

0.8
O

0.6

0.1 [ml

0.4 [m|

0.4

~
"~u/U~=l.O [-]

Fig. 3 Predicted time mean velocity vectors

in computational domain.

0.2
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

rid [-]

Fig. 6 Radial distribution of CI-h mole fraction at 0. lm

from burner at 4~-- 1.0.

Copyright 2000 by ASME

Figure 7 shows the radial distribution of CO mole fraction

in the equivalence ratio ~ =1.0 at x=0.1m downstream from
the burner. This calculation result overestimates experimental
result near the centerline. The reason is because the CO
consumption reaction is too simple to estimate the distribution
of CO mole fraction correctly.
The selection of a reaction mechanism seriously affects on
the calculated results of the distribution of chemical species.
o.1

0.08

LEsEXperiment I

0
0.06
0.04
0.02

,Oo,o

o
0

0.1

; .
0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

r/D [-]

Fig. 7 Radial distribution of CO mole fraction at 0. lm

from burner at 4~=1.0.

CONCLUSION
A three-dimensional Large eddy simulation turbulent
combustion simulation in a coaxial combustor is carried out.
We construct an eddy characteristic time model derived from a
large-scale motion to estimate the combustion reaction rate
using eddy dissipation concept model for saving a
computational time. An estimation of eddy characteristic time
considering Kolmogorov scale is effective for knowing subgrid
scale motion of flame region and the present model is more
suitable for the assumption of eddy dissipation concept model
than a model using time averaged turbulent energy and eddy
dissipation rate. In this study, the calculation results of
temperature and CI-h mole fraction distribution agree well with
the measured results, however the calculated result of CO mole
fraction distribution does not well agree with measured result
for the sake of using simple CO reaction mechanism. If we
want to apply LES combustion simulation on engineering
applications such as gas turbine combustor, we should
thoroughly check the reaction model with reaction mechanism
whether it could be suitable for LES combustion simulation or
not.

REFERENCES
Cook, A. W. and Bush, W. K, 1999, "A Subgrid-Scale
Model for the Scalar Dissipation Rate in nonpremixed
combustion," Physics of Fluids, Vol. ll, pp. 746-748.
Fureby, C. and L6fstr6m, C., 1994, "Large Eddy
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3, pp. 99-164.

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