Theoretical Approach for measuring Burning Laminar velocity: In the earlier sections, it has

been clearly discussed about the measurement of laminar burning velocity using conical flames.
But the measured burning velocity is affected by the velocity gradients induced by the curvature
of the flame cone tip which will be further addressed as flame stretch and heat losses from the
flame to the surroundings. It is difficult to elucidate the flame stretch and also to quantify the
heat losses from the measured burning velocity to obtain the desired unstretched adiabatic
laminar burning velocity. Another approach is to predict the laminar burning velocity of an ideal
flame and then to compare with the experiments to qualitatively estimate the stretch effects and
the same is attempted in this section.
In this work, one dimensional freely propagating adiabatic planar flame at steady state condition
was simulated to predict the burning velocity. An open source and object oriented code Cantera
capable of solving reacting flow problems was used to simulate the planar flame. Cantera can be
implemented using python, Matlab and C++. In the present work, python was used. Cantera
solves the one dimensional conservation equations to get the necessary temperature and species
profiles across the flame and also the laminar burning velocity. In the following section,
description of governing equations, finite difference schemes, and grid adaptation is given.
Governing equations for one dimensional planar flames:
Mass Continuity
Momentum Equation
Energy Conservation
Species Conservation
Important Assumptions: The following assumptions are implemented to simplify the
governing equations to simulate the planar flame One Dimensional Flow
One Dimensional Flow
Constant pressure over the entire domain Constant
Negligible viscous and gravitational forces
Pressure forces are considered as the only external forces
Binary Mixture (Two Species Only)
Species Diffused as result of the concentration gradient and
Thermal diffusion
No Energy accumulation and no work done within Control Volume
Radiation loss from flame to surroundings is neglected
No variation in potential energies
Mass Conservation Equation:
Rate of Increase of mass inside control Volume = Mass flow into the control volume
Mass flow out of the control volume
i.e.

= [ ]

[ ]
+

Now,

= =

After solving the Eq.1 using the expressions and Dividing through by Ax and taking the limit
as x 0,

=
(

..
In case of the steady flow,
(

= 0

=

Momentum Equation: From Newtons Second Law, sum of all forces acting in a given direction
on control volume equals the net flow of momentum out of the control volume in the same
direction.
For 1-D planar flame in the presence of only pressure forces, the momentum equation can
be simplified as follows:
[]

[]
+
= ([

]
+
[

)
Dividing equation by x and taking the limit x0,

..
For 1-D laminar premixed flame, kinetic energy change across the flame is negligible.

(

2
/2)

= 0
Hence momentum equation concludes that the pressure throughout the flow-field is constant

= 0 .
Species Mass Conservation:
Consider 1-D control volume with a plane layer with thickness of x. consider species A flow in
and out of the control volume as result of combined action of bulk motion and diffusion. Within
control volume Species A may be created or destroyed as result of chemical reaction.
Mass flux of species, i is defined by the mass average velocity of species, i as

Where vi is the species velocity

Mixture mass flux is

=

The total species mass flux is the sum of the bulk flow and diffusion contributions i.e.

+
,

Depending on the direction of the species concentration gradients, the diffusional flux or velocity
can be directed either against or along the bulk flow.
Ficks law of diffusion: It describes the rate at which the one species diffuses through the other.
In binary System with two chemical species, species A always diffuses in the direction from the
higher concentration of A to lower concentration of A.

The above equation states that the species A moves relative to the mixture in the direction of
decreasing the mass fraction of A.
For 1-D Binary diffusion, Mass flow rate becomes,

Where YA is mass fraction of species A
The first term represents the mass flux of species A resulting from the bulk motion of the fluid
and latter term represents the relative mass flux of A from the diffusion species A.
General vector form for the mass of the conservation of the ith species
(

+.

The equation equates sum of the net rate of the change of the mass of species i per unit
volume and net rate of mass flow of species i out of control volume by diffusion and bulk flow
per unit area to the net rate of production of species i in the control volume per unit volume.
In the absence of diffusion, mass flux of mixture is sum of mass flow rate of species

=


With given system of LPG- air, species diffusion occurs only as a result of concentration
gradients and thermal diffusion (temperature gradient).

= .

Energy Conservation:
Application of First Law of Thermodynamics inside the control volume provides relation
between heat conduction and enthalpy flux. Given assumptions of LPG Air system and after
mathematically arranging, the energy equation becomes

=

(

)
Heat flux

consists of both Heat conduction defined by Fouriers Law of conduction and an

additional enthalpy flux result from the diffusing species. Generally, heat flux vector is
expressed as sum of contribution of conduction and species diffusion

= +
,

For 1-D Planar system, heat flux is represented as

Now from heat flux equation and energy equation and rearranging the terms,
(

) +

= 0
Now solving first term and using species conservation for 1-D i.e.

1-D Energy conservation Equation:

) +

Now, for numerical models of premixed, steady, laminar flames with only concentration
diffusion and negligible kinetic energy, Energy Equation becomes:

) +

,
=

The above mentioned equations describe a boundary value problem to find function of
Temperature, T(x) and mass fractions, Yi(x) between given boundaries (upstream location and
downstream location).
For Temperature Profile, Second derivative of the temperature in Energy Equation requires two
boundary conditions:
( ) =

( ) = 0
Where Tu is the temperature over the upstream boundary of the flow
Species Continuity Equation with mass fraction and diffusion terms is simplified with
constitutive relations relating v
i,diff
and Y
i
making equation second order in Y

. Two boundary
conditions to solve comes from upstream values of Y
i
and mass fraction gradients become very
less far downstream.
Y
i
( ) = Y
i,o

Y
i

( ) = 0



Finite difference Method:
Using numerical techniques to give approximate but accurate solutions to hard problems, Finite
difference method uses discretization of continuous differential equations. The Laminar Burning
Flame contains two second order differential equations of Energy and Species Conservation with
boundary conditions for each equation. The FDM method create partition in domain into
intervals called grids and express the equation in discrete form within the grids. The Cantera
solves the system of algebraic equation approximate the solution at each grid. The convergence
of FDM method usually is implied from the stability and algorithmic consistency of the FDM
method. The pointwise convergence of system is determined by:
lim
0
||(

| |

= 0

Damped Newton Method: Newton Methods approximate the curve as its tangent about a point.
The close the tangent lies to the curve, the second point meant to be found would be better
approximation.

Newtons Method facilities the method to calculate the function value of tangent and functions
derivative value at same point. The below equation iterates repeatedly to obtain a sequence of
points.

+1
=

)

Convergence of Newtons Sequence points to the root of the system although points are jumping
forth and back erratically or move away from the root.
In case of divergence, Damped Newton method checks if successive iteration decrease in
magnitude unless the sequence converges to the either root or local minimum.
Grid dependency of system: Calculation results develop very little change with large difference
in size of the grid. Grid structure depends on the complexity of the equation and show very little
change over the size of the variable of differential equation. Only the time taken to find the grid
to solve the equation will be very long.


Cantera: Cantera provides types (or classes) of objects representing phases of matter, interfaces
between these phases, reaction managers, time-dependent reactor networks, and steady one-
dimensional reacting flows. With the help of python, Cantera builds a system which includes
several thermodynamics, mechanism and transport classes.
Every Model Simulation contains one or more type of phases of matter. With more than
one phases of matter present in model we need only to evaluate the thermodynamic and transport
properties, and/or homogeneous reaction rates for the phases present. But also the interfaces
between phases and the heterogeneous reaction rates at these interfaces, may be necessary to
correctly simulate the reactions and get desired result. These properties and reaction are defined
under a species or object to evaluate and simulate the model. For example, a gaseous phase for a
combustion simulation might be defined as an ideal gas consisting of a mixture of many species
that react with one another via a specified set of reactions.
These phases defined with their species and reaction should also contains their
thermodynamics and transport properties and rate information. These amount of data is stored in
text files (.cti) and can be excessed by the application or program for simulation.
Cantera uses a damped Newton method to solve these equations with grid given by the
user and use of Jacobian Matrix before re-evaluation. FreeFlame Function is used to represent
freely propagating flame and with given initial state, adiabatic flame temperature and
equilibrium are computed for given gas composition.
Grid dependency of solution is also considered and setRefineCriteria is set accordingly
and tested with different gas composition. In First stage, The Energy Equation is not considered
and only with mass conservation and momentum equation, velocity profile is computed. The
temperature profile is obtained by Energy Equation.

Results:
H2-O2 System:
Grid dependency results: H2O2 system has been computed with different grid sizes (slope and
curve) to measure the dependency of the velocity of results over the grid structure.

Figure 1. Variation of velocity over Slope with different grid structure (curve values) with
Equivalence ratio=0.5

Figure 2. Variation of velocity over Slope with different grid structure (curve values) with
Equivalence ratio=1.0

The velocity results for different Equivalence ratio within given range does not depends on grid
structure of curve =0.05 and slope value will be taken as 0.05 also.

Velocity variation over selected for grid structure
Methane Air system:






Propane-Air system:





Appendix
.Cti files: Usually thermodynamics, transport and mechanism files are given in txt files. But
Cantera uses .cti files that contains all properties with proper syntax to import object with phases.
To combine text files into one .cti file, Cantera provides a utility program ck2cti.
Steps: First we have to change the extension of thermodynamic, transport and mechanism file to
.dat, .dat and .inp respectively.
Open command prompt and change directory to C:/Program files/Cantera/bin
Then using utility program, enter command in command prompt:
ck2cti -i mech.inp -t therm.dat -tr tran.dat
New file with name mech and extension .cti will be created in bin folder. Move this file to your
data folder in Cantera folder to use the new mechanism.
Now Using Python Language and cti file, new gas object is created and used in simulation of
model of LPG-Air. Ex. gas1 = importPhase('gri30.cti', 'gri30');
Now In Beginning, one sample program (free h2 air) given in Cantera folder is studied and
edited to give the optimized result.
This program uses above approach to obtain the relation of mass fraction and temperature. It also
gives the flame burning velocity with density variation across different flame front.
First the velocity profile is obtained with only momentum and mass continuity equation. Then
Energy equation is used to simulate the model and get the temperature profile. From The Species
Continuity Equation, Mass Fraction of species present in the flame is obtained.