Large eddy simulation of a turbulent diffusion flame including thermal radiation heat transfer

Experimental data from the literature for a methane flame on a diffuser burner with diameter of 7.1 cm and flow rate of 84.3 mg/s were used to validate the numerical model of FireFOAM, a compressible solver for flame simulation implemented in the CFD package OpenFOAM^®. This model employs large eddy simulation for the turbulence modeling and it solves the radiative transfer equation using the finite volume discrete ordinate method. For the methane combustion, the eddy dissipation combustion model with a single-step kinetic equation was employed. The simulations were verified for mesh convergence and spectral analysis was used to verify mesh adequacy for the large eddy simulations. The FireFOAM results were compared to available experimental data and to FDS simulation results for the velocity, mixture fraction, temperature and vorticity fields with good agreement. - Highlights: • FireFOAM was validated against experimental data and FDS simulation results. • The flame simulations were performed using large eddy simulation including radiation. • Spectral analysis was used to confirm mesh adequacy for the LES simulations. • FireFOAM results yielded good agreement with the available experimental data. • FireFOAM predicted more adequate flame temperatures than FDS