Modelling turbulent combustion coupled with conjugate heat transfer in OpenFOAM

This paper verifies a mathematical model that is developed for the open source CFD-toolbox OpenFOAM, which couples turbulent combustion with conjugate heat transfer. This feature already exists in well-known commercial codes. It permits the prediction of the flame’s characteristics, its emissions, and the consequent heat transfer between fluids and solids via radiation,
convection, and conduction. The verification is based on simplified 2D axisymmetric cylindrical reactors. In the first step, the combustion part of the solver is compared against experimental data for an open turbulent flame. This shows good agreement when using the full GRI 3.0 mechanism. Afterwards, the flame is confined by a cylindrical wall and simultaneously conjugate heat
transfer is activated and analysed. Finally, a backward facing step is included to increase flow complexity and the results are compared with the commercial CFD code ANSYS Fluent. It is shown that the combustion and conjugate heat transfer are successfully coupled. When radiation is disabled, comparable results are achieved by both solvers, while enabling radiation leads to larger discrepancies.