CFD Best Practices to Predict NOx, CO and Lean Blowout for Combustor Design

Abstract

An effort was undertaken to identify best practices for CFD analysis of fluid flow in Lean-Direct Injection (LDI) combustors with swirl-venturi swirlers for next-generation LDI design. The National Combustion Code (NCC) was used to perform non-reacting and reacting computations on several LDI injector configurations in a 3×3 element array with different vane angles. Non-reacting and reacting computations were performed with single and multi-element LDI configurations, with a consistent approach to mesh-optimization, spray-modeling and kinetics-modeling with the NCC. Computational predictions of NOx emissions index were compared with experimental data. CFD values of CO were used to assess lean blow-out predictive capability for two different multi-element, LDI configurations and compared to experimental data.