Steady-State: Combustion Chamber

Description

This project simulates steady-state combustion inside a cylindrical combustion chamber using ANSYS Fluent, a device central to countless industrial applications where continued performance improvement remains an active engineering focus. The chamber has four radial air inlets around its circumference, four axial fuel inlets at the top, and a single outlet at the bottom for combustion products. Air enters through two distinct paths: the first air stream passes through swirl-inducing blades before entering the chamber to promote flow circulation, while the second stream bypasses direct entry and instead reaches the chamber through perforations, a staged air-admission strategy intended to produce a more stable flame. Methane serves as the fuel. The 3D geometry is built in SpaceClaim and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with 2,626,307 elements.

Methodology

The chemical reaction between air and methane is captured with the Species Transport model, tracking five species: O2, N2, CH4, CO2, and H2O. Air enters at 0.21 oxygen mole/mass fraction, a flow rate of 0.005 kg/s, and 430 K, while fuel enters simultaneously at 0.0001 kg/s and 300 K. The outer chamber wall is treated as adiabatic with zero heat flux. Turbulence and the resulting temperature distribution are resolved using the RNG k-epsilon model together with the energy equation.

Analysis

The solution yields 2D contours of temperature and velocity throughout the chamber. These results indicate the staged air admission and swirl-inducing blade arrangement are achieving effective combustion, with the chamber reaching an average temperature of 1006.5 K, consistent with a well-established, stable methane-air flame under the given flow and thermal boundary conditions.