NEAR-BLOWOFF DYNAMICS OF BLUFF-BODY-STABILIZED PREMIXED HYDROGEN/AIR FLAMES IN A NARROW CHANNEL

The flame stability is known to be significantly enhanced when the flame is attached to a bluff-body. The main interest of this study is on the stability of the flame in a meso-scale channel, considering applications such as combustion-based micro power generators. We investigate the dynamics of lean premixed hydrogen/air flames stabilized behind a square box in a two-dimensional meso-scale channel with high-fidelity numerical simulations. Characteristics of both non-reacting flows and reacting flows over the bluff-body are studied for a range of the mean inflow velocity. The flame stability in reacting flows is investigated by ramping up the mean inflow velocity step by step. As the inlet velocity is increased, the initially stable steady flames undergo a transition to an unsteady mode of regular asymmetric fluctuation. When the inlet velocity is further increased, the flame is eventually blown off. Between the regular fluctuation mode and blowoff limit, there exists a narrow range of the inlet velocity where the flames exhibit periodic local extinction and recovery. Approaching further to blowoff limit, the local extinction and recovery becomes highly transient and a failure of recovery leads blowoff and extinction of the flame kernel.