Lecture 7

Tips & Tricks

14.5 Release

Advanced Combustion Modeling

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

General Guidelines
Boundary conditions

Combustion is often very sensitive to inlet boundary conditions

Correct velocity and scalar profiles can be critical

Wall heat transfer is challenging to predict; if known, specify wall

temperature instead of external convection/radiation BC

Discretization

Start with first order, then converge with second order to improve accuracy
Second order discretization especially important for tri/tet meshes
Initial conditions

While steady-state solution is independent of the IC, poor IC may cause divergence

due

to the number and nonlinearity of the transport equations

Cold flow solution, then gas combustion, then particles, then radiation

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Solution strategies for gas phase reactions

Non-premixed model:

in general there is no need to solve first the cold flow, or to patch high

temperature
Start with the reacting flow simulation without radiation
Enable radiation once the main flow feature and temperature field have been
established

Eddy dissipation/finite rate model:

Start with a cold flow solution

Patching of products and/or high temperature is needed to start the reactions
Use temperature dependent cps to avoid unrealistically high temperatures

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Solution strategies for gas phase reactions

Default URF could be too aggressive for complex reacting flow system
The effect of underrelaxation is highly non-linear

Decrease the diverging residual URF in increments of 0.1

Underrelax density when using the mixture-fraction PDF model (0.7)
Underrelax velocity for high buoyancy flows
Underrelax species to start up the solution (0.9 or lower)
Once solution is stable, attempt to increase species, energy, mixture and
radiation URFs as close as possible to 1

Best Practice for the Non-Premixed model are available on the customer
portal

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Solution strategies for DPM reacting flow

(steady)
Converge the non reacting flow using first order discretization

After the flow field has been established start the particle tracking
Depending on the model and conditions patching might be required

Patching high temperature to start the evaporation or devolatilisation

If using the Eddy dissipation model patching some products to start the gas phase
reactions

Run the case tracking particle every 20-30 gas phase iterations and lowering
the URF for the DPM source term (0.1-0.2)
Enabled radiation only after the main temperature field and flame shape
have been established

Solve until a good heat and mass balance have been achieved

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Solution strategies for DPM reacting flow

(unsteady)
The DPM source terms are updated only every particle iteration. If the DPM
under-relaxation factor is smaller than one:
If only one particle iteration is performed within the time step: check the Update
DPM source at every iteration option and make sure that enough gas phase
iterations are calculated within each time step
Or take care that sufficient particle iterations are performed within the time step in
order to achieve the full source terms (not recommended due to CPU penalties)

Use smaller time steps if it does not converge. (make sure that the solution is
converge within each time step)

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Troubleshooting DPM
Start DPM particle/droplet too early
before the flow field has been
developed is often the cause of
convergence issues in reacting flow
DPM problem
Increasing the number of tries and
having more iterations between
DPM tracks generally helps to make
the solution more stable
If there are a large number of
incomplete particle you should
increase the max number steps in
the Discrete Phase model panel

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Solution strategies for detailed chemistry

Initial conditions and set up

A poor initial condition might cause the stiff chemistry solver to fail
A good initial solutions can be calculated using the non-premixed or
eddy dissipation models, that would provide a good initial guess
(temperature and species) for the stiff chemistry solver

ISAT tolerance

Start with the default 10e-3 and increase the table size from the

default 100 MB
To fully converge the solution decrease the ISAT tolerance and make
sure that the solution is independent from any table interpolation
error

EDC model, Laminar-Finite Rate (with stiff chemistry solver),

Eulerian Composition PDF (with stiff chemistry solver)

For some cases, the models tend to converge slowly, to speed up the
convergence change the Aggressiveness Factor
Aggressiveness Factor [between 0 (most robust but slowest
convergence) and 1]

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Convergence
Residuals should be less than 10-3 except for T and P-1 and species, which
should be less than 10-6
The mass and energy flux reports must balance

The fluxes can be checked from the report fluxes menu

The flux report will include only heat and mass flux at the boundary (not any
additional source term in the fluid or solid domain)

Monitor variables of interest (e.g. mean temperature at the outlet):

solution is stable and not changing if running the case further
Ensure contour plots of field variables are smooth, realistic and steady

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

Release 14.5

Species Reports
report/species-mass-flow

Print list of species mass flow rate at

inlets and outlets

Available after performing 1 iteration

These options are more accurate

than surface integrals at
boundary zones since no
interpolation is used.
Report Fluxes

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

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Release 14.5

Mass and Energy Flux in DPM Problems

Report Fluxes panel will report the DPM sources (mass and enthalpy)
as well
Heat of reaction source is available only after performing 1 iteration

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

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Release 14.5

Customizing the reaction rate

Eddy dissipation/finite rate model

DEFINE_VR_RATE ( name, c, t, r, mw, yi, rr, rr_t)

Surface chemistry model

DEFINE_SR_RATE ( name, f, t, r, my, yi, rr)

Multiple char reaction model

DEFINE_PR_RATE ( name, c, t, r, mw, ci, p, sf, dif_index, cat_index, rr)

Premix model UDF for the turbulent flame speed

DEFINE_TURB_PREMIX_SOURCE ( name, c, t, turb_flame_speed, source)

Detailed chemistry model

DEFINE_NET_REACTION_RATE( name, p, temp, yi, rr, jac)

NOx model

DEFINE_NOX_RATE ( name, c, t, NOx)

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

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Release 14.5

Summary
We have tremendous in-house expertise in combustion modeling.

Industrial experience
World-class developers and consultants
The range of physical models for combustion applications continues to
grow.

We are dedicated to providing better service to our customers; we

appreciate and encourage your feedback!
Several tutorial are available on the customer portal (to be posted soon)

Advanced Reacting Flow tutorial

Intermediate tutorial - applications tutorials with a focus on reacting flows

2012 ANSYS, Inc.

March 12, 2013

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Release 14.5