Numerical Modeling of Laminar Flames with Detailed Kinetics Based on the Operator-Splitting Method

In this work, we applied and analyzed a new computational code, called laminarSMOKE, for the numerical simulation of laminar flames in complex, multidimensional geometries with detailed kinetic mechanisms. The code, built on top of the open-source OpenFOAM platform, solves the usual transport equations of mass, momentum, energy, and species for reacting flows on both structured and unstructured meshes. The operator-splitting technique is adopted in order to effectively face the reacting, stiff processes associated with detailed kinetics. The proposed algorithm was used to simulate different combustion systems with different degrees of complexity under both steady-state and transient conditions. In particular, simulations of 1D and 2D laminar premixed flames, 2D counter-flow diffusion flames, and coflow flames (purely diffusive and partially premixed) were successfully performed, demonstrating that the proposed tool is a robust, accurate solution method for laminar flames. In particular, the simulations of coflow, laminar flames with very detailed kinetic mechanisms (∼200 species) resulted in very good agreement with published experimental data. Despite its generality (i.e., the ability to manage arbitrarily complex multidimensional geometries), the laminarSMOKE code showed satisfactory scalability up to 96 processors. More importantly, as demonstrated by Tosatto et al. [Combustion Theory and Modeling 2011, 15 (4), 455−486], it was observed that the parallel efficiency increased with the number of species in the kinetic scheme adopted. This makes the proposed code an ideal framework for the numerical simulation of combustion systems with very detailed kinetic schemes. In contrast to most of the existing codes for the simulation of reacting systems with detailed kinetics, the laminarSMOKE code is freely distributed on the web (http://www.opensmoke.polimi.it/).