Efficient Thermo-Chemistry Tabulation for Non-Premixed Combustion at High-Pressure Conditions

Propellant injection and turbulent combustion in high-pressure engines is often dominated by real-gas effects. However, previous studies suggested that the departure of the fluid properties from an ideal gas behavior has only a limited effect on the laminar flame structure. This is due to the fact that chemical reactions take place in the flame zone where the temperature is sufficiently high and molecular interactions are negligible, i.e., the ideal gas assumption is valid. On the other hand, various experimental and numerical studies of injection processes at high-pressure conditions demonstrated that real-gas effects can have a strong impact on the turbulent flow. Mixing is influenced by the rapid change of fluid properties. In this work, we exploit the gap in the fidelity of the thermodynamics model needed to describe the laminar flame structure and that needed to describe the turbulent flow field. We then propose a new real-gas flamelet model with increased numerical performance. The computational cost of the new formulation is not significantly higher than that of an ideal gas simulation. The performance of the method is analyzed and the error that is introduced by our assumptions is assessed by comparison to more complete modeling. Finally, the method is used to simulate a turbulent jet flame emanating from a coaxial injector at supercritical pressure and cryogenic oxidizer temperature. The results are compared with experimental OH^∗ images giving evidence of the suitability of the present method.