A parallel solution – adaptive method for three-dimensional turbulent non-premixed combusting flows

A parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm is proposed and applied to the prediction of steady turbulent non-premixed compressible combusting flows in three space dimensions. The parallel solution-adaptive algorithm solves the system of partial-differential equations governing turbulent compressible flows of reactive thermally perfect gaseous mixtures using a fully coupled finite-volume formulation on body-fitted multi-block hexahedral meshes. The compressible formulation adopted herein can readily accommodate large density variations and thermo-acoustic phenomena. A flexible block-based hierarchical data structure is used to maintain the connectivity of the solution blocks in the multi-block mesh and to facilitate automatic solution-directed mesh adaptation according to physics-based refinement criteria. For calculations of near-wall turbulence, an automatic near-wall treatment readily accommodates situations during adaptive mesh refinement where the mesh resolution may not be sufficient for directly calculating near-wall turbulence using the low-Reynolds-number formulation. Numerical results for turbulent diffusion flames, including cold- and hot-flow predictions for a bluff-body burner, are described and compared to available experimental data. The numerical results demonstrate the validity and potential of the parallel AMR approach for predicting fine-scale features of complex turbulent non-premixed flames.