Numerical Modelling of a Flameless Combustor

Flameless combustion can be adopted as a low-emission combustion regime in the aviation sector, which is one of the biggest contributors to NOx emissions and is expected to grow in the near future. Nevertheless, several issues must be solved before any practical applications. Effective design procedure must deal with either combustion or heat transfer phenomena occurring at extremely low—temperature conditions. To this aim, experimental and numerical analyses focused on the characterization of fuel/oxidant behaviour are strongly needed and represent an essential step for further development. Besides, the complexity of the analysed technological system requires advanced tools for the definition of the chemical kinetics, for the burner designs and more in general for the definition of aviation equipment design. In this light, the thesis has been addressed to the study of flameless combustion mechanisms within a combustion chamber prototype developed in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft. In particular, the temperature and species concentration fields have been analysed. The CFD tool which will be used is Ansys Fluent together with two detailed reaction mechanisms (KIBO and RDM19).