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Modeling unsteady turbulent flame development in lifted spray flames is important as a strong correlation exists between pollutant formation and the transient flame features such as auto-ignition, flame propagation and flame stabilization. Detailed chemistry mechanisms with large number of species are required to resolve the chemical kinetics accurately. These factors make high-fidelity simulation of engine combustion computationally expensive. In this work, a turbulent combustion model is proposed based on tabulation of flamelets. The aim is to develop a comprehensive combustion modeling approach incorporating detailed chemistry mechanisms, turbulence models and highly resolved grids leveraging the computational cost advantage of tabulation. A novel technique of implementing unsteady flamelet libraries without the use of progress variables is implemented for igniting sprays called Tabulated Flamelet Model (TFM).

In this work, a turbulent combustion model is developed for large eddy simulation (LES) using a novel flamelet tabulation technique based on the framework of the multi-flamelet representative interactive flamelet (RIF) model. The overall aim is to develop a detailed model with elaborate chemistry mechanisms, LES turbulence models and highly resolved grids leveraging the computational cost advantage of a tabulated model. A novel technique of implementing unsteady flamelet libraries by using the residence time instead of the progress variables is proposed. In this study, LES of n-dodecane spray flame is performed using the tabulated turbulent combustion model along with a dynamic structure subgrid model. A high-resolution mesh is employed with a cell size of 62.5 microns in the entire spray and combustion regions. This model is then validated against igniting n-dodecane sprays under diesel engine conditions.

Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence model has been used extensively for diesel engine simulations due to its computational efficiency and is expected to remain the workhorse computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool for industry in the near future. Alternatively, large eddy simulations (LES) can potentially deal with complex flows and cover a large disparity of turbulence length scales, which makes this technique more and more attractive in the engine community. An n-dodecane spray flame (Spray A from Engine Combustion Network) was simulated using a dynamic structure LES model to understand the transient behavior of this turbulent flame. The liquid spray was treated with a traditional Lagrangian method and the gas-phase reaction was closed using a delta probability density function (PDF) combustion model. A 103-species skeletal mechanism was used for n-dodecane chemical kinetic model.