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
10
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
11
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
12
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
