Methane Combustion in a Gas Stove — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project presents a CFD simulation of methane combustion in a gas stove — a familiar everyday device that's surprisingly rich in physics. Modeling stove combustion matters for design, optimization, safety, and efficiency. As methane burns, it raises the local temperature, which lowers the air density; the hot exhaust then rises by buoyancy, drawing fresh, denser air in to sustain the flame. In this project, you'll capture that complete cycle — combustion, heat release, and natural-draft airflow — in a full 3D model. As the opening project of the Reacting Flow: Beginner CFD Training Package, it introduces the foundational combustion workflow through the most familiar everyday burning device.MethodologyThe 3D gas stove geometry is designed in Design Modeler and meshed with a large unstructured grid of roughly 5.53 million elements using Fluent Meshing. The energy equation is activated for the reacting, heat-releasing flow, and the Species Transport model is set up with a methane combustion mechanism. The turbulence–chemistry interaction is handled with the eddy-dissipation model — a robust, efficient choice for combustion — and turbulence is modeled with the Realizable k-ε model, which offers good accuracy at low computational cost for this kind of problem. A Pressure Inlet boundary condition is applied so that the combustion air is drawn in naturally by the pressure difference rather than forced, capturing the coupled physics of combustion and buoyancy-driven natural convection.AnalysisPost-processing produces temperature, CO₂ mass fraction, and velocity contours in both 2D axial planes and 3D, revealing the flame structure, the products of combustion, and the natural-draft airflow. The results identify a peak flame temperature of about 1709 K and a buoyancy-driven velocity of about 1.33 m/s, confirming how the heat release sets up the rising exhaust and the fresh-air intake that sustains the flame. Combustion plus natural draft appears in stoves, furnaces, water heaters, flares, and fired heaters, and the Species Transport + eddy-dissipation + buoyancy workflow built here is a foundational, widely transferable combustion-modeling skill. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a reacting-flow simulation with the Species Transport model and a methane combustion mechanism, configure the eddy-dissipation turbulence–chemistry interaction, apply a pressure-inlet natural-draft boundary condition, and interpret the temperature, species, and velocity fields of a buoyancy-driven combustion problem.

DescriptionThis project simulates a combustion chamber in ANSYS Fluent using a transient, pressure-based solver with the effect of gravity included. This is fundamentally a reacting-flow problem: the flow field and the chemistry are coupled, so the simulation must resolve the chemical reaction, the heat it releases, and the transport of the resulting hot products together. Methane is burned with air inside the chamber, and the entire setup is built around capturing this reaction and the way the combustion products move through the geometry. The chamber comprises three main parts — the air inlet pipe, the burner section, and the outlet pipe — and contains a thin internal wall pierced by cavities of varying size. The small primary holes cool the chamber wall through a film-cooling layer of flow, while the larger holes help anchor the flame at the center of the chamber, a configuration typical of real combustor liners.The geometry is three-dimensional and was created in Design Modeler. Meshing was performed in ANSYS Meshing using an unstructured triangular grid of 694,928 elements.MethodologyBecause the flow inside a combustor is complex and highly turbulent, the RNG k-ε turbulence model with standard wall functions is used. The combustion itself is represented through the Species Transport model, which lies at the heart of any reacting-flow simulation: it tracks each chemical constituent and the reactions that convert reactants into products while releasing energy. Air and fuel (CH₄) enter at mass flow rates of 0.02 kg/s and 0.0006 kg/s respectively, both at 300 K, and the chamber's outer wall is treated as adiabatic. The reaction is modeled as a two-step methane-air combustion involving six species — methane, oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide — with the inlet air composed of oxygen and nitrogen at mass fractions of 0.23 and 0.77.ConclusionThe results are presented as three-dimensional volume renderings and streamlines of velocity, pressure, temperature, density, and the mass fractions of the participating species, giving a detailed view of the combustion process. Air enters around the periphery and the methane-air mixture from the bottom surface, meeting to form the combustion region. There, temperature and pressure rise sharply as the reaction proceeds, and the heated flow accelerates toward the outlet — the central behavior the simulation sets out to capture.As a study in reacting flow, the project demonstrates how a species-transport, multi-step reaction approach coupled with a transient solver can reproduce the tightly linked interaction of chemistry and fluid motion — flame stabilization, heat release, and the transport of combustion products — through a realistic combustor geometry.

DescriptionThis tutorial presents a CFD analysis of a 2-D gas turbine combustion chamber using ANSYS Fluent.A gas turbine is a rotating machine driven by the energy released during combustion. It consists of three main components: a compressor that pressurizes incoming air, a combustion chamber where fuel and air mix and ignite, and a turbine that converts the energy of the hot, expanding gases into mechanical work. Part of this mechanical output drives the compressor itself, while the remainder powers the generator in turbo-generator setups, provides thrust in turbojet and turbofan engines, or serves other applications depending on the turbine's design.The fuel delivery system is one of the most actively developed areas of gas turbine design, with injectors playing a central role in achieving efficient combustion. This project models the combustion of a methane-air mixture inside the chamber, with methane and oxygen entering at velocities of 128.9304 m/s and 12.0396 m/s, and temperatures of 286 K and 109 K, respectively. The resulting mixture ignites, releasing energy and generating heat throughout the domain.The geometry was created in Design Modeler and discretized using ANSYS Meshing, producing a structured mesh of 197,006 cells.MethodologySince the simulation involves multiple chemical species, the Species Transport model is employed to solve the transport equations for each species, while a volumetric reaction defines the combustion process. The Eddy-Dissipation model captures the interaction between turbulence and chemical kinetics, and the real gas equation accounts for density variations of the vapor phase with temperature.ResultsThe simulation outputs contours of temperature, velocity, pressure, and species mass fractions throughout the combustion chamber, confirming that the combustion reaction proceeds as expected. Concentrations of the oxidizer and fuel are highest near the inlet and decrease progressively as they are consumed in the reaction, while combustion products such as H₂O and CO start at zero and increase steadily along the chamber. As the reaction is exothermic, it releases substantial heat, driving a marked rise in chamber temperature.

Vortex Combustion Chamber Simulation in ANSYS FluentIntroductionThis project simulates the combustion reaction occurring inside a vortex combustion chamber using ANSYS Fluent. Combustion is a chemical process between a combustible material and an oxidizing agent, resulting in the release of heat and the transformation of raw materials, typically accompanied by light in the form of a flame or glow. While combustion is fundamentally a form of oxidation reaction, its rapid reaction rate, substantial heat release, and associated temperature rise and flame formation place it in a distinct category of chemical processes. The vortex combustion chamber represents a new generation of liquid-fuel internal combustion engine design, in which a specific injector arrangement generates a swirling vortex flow. This vortex enhances cooling and improves mixing of the propulsion components within the chamber, enabling complete combustion to be achieved in a smaller chamber volume.Geometry and MeshThe combustion chamber geometry was designed and meshed within GAMBIT, using an unstructured mesh totaling 379,535 cells.MethodologyThe combustion process was analyzed using the species transport model, with a mixture of air and methane serving as the fuel. The Eddy-Dissipation method was employed to capture the chemical-turbulent interaction of the combustion reactants, and the NOx prediction model was activated, using the temperature method for the turbulence-chemistry interaction mode. The ideal gas equation was used to account for density variations resulting from temperature changes within the chamber.Results and ConclusionContours of velocity, pressure, temperature, and species mass fraction were generated in both 3D and 2D, clearly capturing the formation of the combustion flame and the resulting temperature distribution within the chamber. Velocity vectors reveal a high degree of flow turbulence throughout the domain, and the overall contour results confirm that the combustion chamber's performance has been accurately captured by the simulation.

Diesel Fuel Combustion in a Gas Turbine Combustion Chamber — ANSYS Fluent CFD Simulation TrainingThis project simulates the combustion of diesel fuel inside the combustion chamber of a gas turbine system using ANSYS Fluent, with the full case analyzed through CFD post-processing.The combustion chamber works as follows: air enters from the space surrounding the chamber, passes through a bladed diffuser duct where it becomes turbulent, and then enters the dedicated combustion space to mix more effectively with the fuel. The fuel, meanwhile, is injected into the chamber through a nozzle and mixes with the incoming air, allowing combustion to take place. The fuel used is diesel (C₁₆H₂₉), which reacts with the airflow.The combustion reaction involves four species — diesel, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon — so the Species Transport model is used to define the gaseous species, together with the volumetric reaction model to govern the reaction between them. Air enters the chamber at a velocity of 3 m/s and a temperature of 300 K, while diesel is sprayed into the chamber interior at 4 m/s and 300 K. The aim of the study is to investigate the mass fractions of the reactants and the combustion products.The 3D geometry was created in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing using an unstructured grid, for a total of 3,488,057 cells.MethodologyThe Species Transport model is used to analyze the combustion process, and the energy equation is activated to compute the temperature changes throughout the domain.ResultsOnce the solution is complete, 2D and 3D contours of pressure, temperature, velocity, and the mass fractions of diesel, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor are obtained.The contours show that the fuel mixes well with the oxidizer and that combustion takes place, with its products clearly visible. The temperature is very high in parts of the combustion chamber, and the results show that the combustion flame is well formed.

DescriptionThis project simulates combustion in a gas flare system using ANSYS Fluent, investigated through CFD analysis. The model was built in 3D using Design Modeler. Owing to the symmetrical structure of the flare and to reduce computational cost, only a 120-degree segment of the geometry was modeled.The flare has a cylindrical structure situated within a cylindrical computational domain. Several distinct sections — steam, gas flow, and pilot — are defined at the tip of the flare. Meshing was performed in ANSYS Meshing, producing 1,043,138 elements.MethodologyA flare system, or gas flare, is a combustion device used in industrial facilities such as oil and gas refineries and at oil and gas production wells, particularly on offshore platforms, to safely burn off surplus hydrocarbon gases. The Species Transport model was used to carry out this simulation.The reacting mixture is defined as an n-butane–air blend consisting of nine gaseous species: C₄H₁₀, O₂, CO₂, H₂O, H₂, CH₄, C₂H₆, C₃H₈, and N₂. The volumetric reaction model was activated to enable the chemical reactions and, in turn, the combustion process, which is represented by five distinct chemical reactions.At the flare tip, a stream of hydrocarbon gas enters the environment at a flow rate of 0.09259 kg/s. Simultaneously, a methane flow from the pilot and a steam flow from the steam inlet — both at velocities of 2.479 m/s — enter the domain to ignite the mixture. The standard k-epsilon model was used to solve the turbulent flow equations, together with the energy equation to compute the temperature variation within the combustion region.ConclusionOn completion of the solution, three-dimensional contours of velocity and of the mass fraction of each modeled gas species were obtained.For instance, examining the three-dimensional contour of carbon dioxide clearly shows that the combustion reaction and the resulting production of CO₂ are taking place. As the results also demonstrate, the mass fractions of the fuel species decrease with distance from the fuel inlet, while the mass fractions of the reaction products correspondingly increase along the same direction — confirming the progress of combustion through the domain.

Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) Reactor — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project presents a CFD simulation of Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), the most widely used industrial route for producing hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuels. In an SMR plant, methane reacts with steam over a catalyst to produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide through a series of endothermic reactions, with the necessary heat supplied by a burner in a surrounding heating chamber. In this project, you'll model a sleeve-type SMR reactor — capturing both the catalytic reforming reactions inside the tubes and the combustion that supplies their heat — a genuine multi-physics chemical-engineering problem. Within the Reacting Flow: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project moves beyond pure combustion into industrial reacting flow, coupling catalytic chemistry with the combustion that drives it.MethodologyThe SMR plant geometry — a heating chamber plus reforming tubes — is designed in Design Modeler and meshed with a large unstructured grid of roughly 1.65 million elements for the complex multi-zone reactor. The Species Transport model is set up to track multiple chemical species (H₂, CO, CO₂, CH₄, O₂), with multiple volumetric reactions defined — three reforming reactions inside the tubes and one combustion reaction in the thermal chamber. A porous medium is modeled as the catalyst inside the reforming tubes, coupling the reacting flow with porous-zone behavior. The setup handles the endothermic reforming reactions and the heat coupling between the burner and the reforming tubes, so the combustion heat drives the hydrogen-producing chemistry inside the tubes.AnalysisPost-processing focuses on the mass-fraction contours of each species, verifying methane consumption and hydrogen production and confirming that the reactor is operating correctly. From these fields you can follow how the reforming reactions convert methane and steam into hydrogen along the tubes, and how the combustion in the surrounding chamber supplies the heat that sustains them. Hydrogen is central to clean energy, ammonia synthesis, and refining, and the skills developed here — multi-reaction Species Transport coupled with catalytic porous zones — transfer directly to catalytic converters, fuel reformers, chemical reactors, and combustion systems across the process industries. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a multi-reaction Species Transport model, couple reacting flow with a catalytic porous zone, handle endothermic reactions with burner heat coupling, and interpret species contours to evaluate reactor performance.

This project simulates hydrogen combustion inside a scramjet engine at hypersonic speed — one of the most demanding reacting-flow problems in CFD, coupling supersonic compressible flow, finite-rate chemistry, and wall heating in a single transient case. A scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) has no moving parts: it relies entirely on the engine geometry to compress incoming air, inject and burn fuel, and expand the products for thrust. The distinction matters — ramjets decelerate flow to subsonic before burning, while a scramjet keeps combustion supersonic, enabling flight above Mach 5.The methodology combines several physics layers. Combustion is modeled with the Species Transport model and its volumetric reaction sub-model, with air treated as an ideal gas so density responds correctly to the steep temperature rise during burning. Turbulence uses the standard k-ε model, and the case is solved transient to capture the developing flow and flame. Because hypersonic reacting flows are numerically stiff, first-order discretization and reduced under-relaxation factors are used deliberately to hold convergence stable.Setup: the 2-D geometry has two sections — a lower preheating region and an upper stable-burn region — built in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing as a structured mesh (16,320 cells). Inlet air enters at Mach 6 with the domain initialized at 300 K. At the mid-nozzle, where the flow decelerates to Mach 1, hydrogen is injected supersonically, triggering combustion in the nozzle.What the results show: 2-D contours and vectors of pressure, temperature, velocity, Mach number, density, and turbulence intensity. The flow physics reads clearly — air enters, slows to Mach 1 at the combustion section, then re-accelerates toward the outlet. Combustion drives the temperature past 4000 K, and viscous heating is visible in the near-wall elements, where high-speed shear converts kinetic energy into heat against the wall.You'll learn to: set up a transient supersonic reacting-flow case, configure Species Transport with volumetric reactions and ideal-gas density, inject fuel into a Mach-1 region to initiate combustion, and stabilize a stiff hypersonic solution through discretization and relaxation control.

Explosion — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project presents a CFD simulation of a TNT explosion — a problem central to engineering safety, military applications, structural protection, and blast planning. An explosion is a very fast exothermic reaction that suddenly produces large volumes of hot gaseous products, spiking pressure and temperature and launching compression waves that travel outward through the surrounding air. In this project, you'll model the rapid decomposition of TNT — where 2 moles of TNT generate 22 moles of gaseous products — and watch the resulting spherical pressure wave propagate and dissipate across the domain. Within the Reacting Flow: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project applies reacting-flow modeling to a blast event, introducing the transient wave propagation that defines explosion physics.MethodologyThe domain is a half-sphere of 5 m radius with a central TNT charge (a 5 cm radius half-sphere), built in SpaceClaim using symmetry to reduce cost, and meshed with a large structured grid of roughly 2.67 million elements capable of resolving a traveling wave. Because the problem involves moving pressure waves, a transient solver is required. The Species Transport model is set up with a defined species mixture and a volume reaction, with finite-rate turbulence–chemistry interaction and the direct source chemistry solver. The Realizable k-ε turbulence model is applied with the energy equation activated. A critical modeling choice is defining the mixture density as an ideal gas, which is what allows the simulation to capture the wave travel through the domain.AnalysisPost-processing produces temperature and pressure contours over time, along with an animation of the propagating compression wave, and quantifies the wave speed at roughly 420 m/s. From these results you can follow how the rapid exothermic reaction spikes the pressure and temperature at the charge and launches the spherical compression wave that travels outward and dissipates across the domain. Blast modeling protects buildings, vehicles, and people, and the reacting-flow + ideal-gas + transient workflow built here transfers directly to detonations, deflagrations, gas explosions, and pressure-vessel safety analysis across defense, oil and gas, and process industries. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a transient reacting-flow explosion simulation, configure the Species Transport model with a volume reaction and finite-rate chemistry, apply the ideal-gas density needed to capture wave propagation, and interpret the pressure and temperature fields of a blast wave.

DescriptionExplosions in oil storage tank farms represent a persistent safety hazard in reacting flow modeling, where a rapid, energetic chemical reaction consumes fuel and releases heat along with multiple gaseous combustion products into the surrounding environment. This CFD study uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate the explosion of oil storage tanks and the subsequent dispersion of combustion pollutants across an urban area, addressing a real safety concern for regions where tank farms sit close to residential neighborhoods and industrial units. The analysis evaluates how far and in what concentrations explosion-generated pollutants such as carbon dioxide and other combustion gases reach the surrounding population, providing a basis for risk assessment and emergency planning.MethodologyThe three-dimensional urban domain, measuring 6.6 km in length, 4.6 km in width, and 200 m in height, is built in Design Modeler and includes a dedicated zone containing eighteen cylindrical oil tanks alongside separate zones representing residential and industrial districts. The domain is discretized with an unstructured mesh of 1,746,979 elements. Because the explosion involves chemical reactions among several gaseous constituents, the Species Transport model forms the core of the setup, tracking seven species — CO₂, SO₂, NO₂, CO, H₂O, C, and air, with air serving as the background fluid. The explosion is represented through defined energy and mass sources within the tank region: a heat source of 139,072.7 W/m paired with production rates for each pollutant, including CO₂ at 0.1358 kg/m³·s, H₂O at 0.0679 kg/m³·s, CO at 0.0047 kg/m³·s, SO₂ at 0.000131 kg/m³·s, C at 0.0068 kg/m³·s, and a small NO₂ contribution. Wind-driven dispersion is captured by setting the northern and western domain faces as airflow inlets and the eastern and southern faces as outlets, with air entering at 300 K and 20 m/s directed at a 60° angle, decomposed into corresponding x- and y-velocity components.Results AnalysisThe simulation produces three-dimensional contours of temperature and of the volume fraction for each gaseous species throughout the domain. Results show that the released pollutants are carried by wind into the surrounding residential and industrial zones, confirming potential population exposure following such an explosion event. The study demonstrates how species transport combined with defined energy and mass sources can reproduce the generation and atmospheric spread of combustion products, offering a practical basis for evaluating explosion hazards and informing the siting, spacing, and protection of facilities located near populated areas.