NEXTFLAME

One of the key issues in the present state of the art of CFD for combustion chambers in industrial applications is the predictable character of the simulations involving the injection of liquid fuel as a polydisperse spray. Whereas the case of purely gaseous combustion has received a rather complete investigation, two-phase combustion involves a much more complex environment due to the interaction of turbulence and combustion with the polydisperse liquid phase. In this context, the present project proposes to join the research effort of complementary teams in order to cover the whole scientific spectrum from numerical analysis and accurate and reliable numerical scheme design, through high performance scientific computing with academic and industrial code, up to new generations of optical diagnostics for experimental measurement of two-phase flows. These teams already have a proven expertise is these fields, an already large collaborative experience and they are used to interdisciplinary research. The objective of the project is two-fold: 1- to provide thorough simulation and experimental databases and analysis of two-phase flames in order to have a set of detailed validation reference configurations and the understanding of the physics involved, 2- to evaluate and validate with these databases the models implemented in the high performance code, that will be used in more complex configurations with reduced order models, a step which is crucially missing for two-phase flow combustion applications at academic level.