Large-Eddy Simulation of the two-phase flow in an aeronautical combustor using an Euler-Lagrange approach

Aeroautical gas turbines need to satisfy growingly stringent demands on pollutant emission. Pollutant emissions are directly related to the quality of fuel air mixing prior to combustion. Therefore, their reduction relies on a more accurate prediction of spray formation and interaction of the spray with the gaseous turbulent flowfield. Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) seems an adequate numerical tool to predict these mechanisms. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of simplified injection methods on the LES of the evaporating two-phase flow inside a complex geometry. The chosen target configuration is an aeronautical combustor installed on the MERCATO test-rig. The experimental setup includes an air-swirler injection system and a pressureswirl atomizer typical of realistic aeronautic combustors. In a first step, a simplified injection model for pressure swirl atomizers neglecting the impact of liquid disintegration on spray dynamics is presented. The main objective of this model lies in the reproduction of similar injection conditions for Eulerian and Lagrangian representations of the dispersed phase. In a second step, the Lagrangian injection method is combined to a secondary breakup model of the literature to partly account for the liquid disintegration process. The presented LES’s of the evaporating two-phase flow inside the MERCATO geometry consider two different aspects. First, the impact of injection modeling on spray dynamics is assessed. Second, Euler-Euler and Euler-Lagrange simulations relying on the common simplified injection model are compared