A numerical study of the combustion and jet characteristics of a hydrogen fueled turbulent hot-jet ignition (THJI) chamber

Turbulent hot-jet ignition (THJI) is an advanced ignition enhancement technology which can potentially overcome the problem associated with lean burn combustion. The present study makes an effort on the comprehensive understanding of a hydrogen fueled THJI chamber with various pre-chamber spark locations. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed using an in-house code based on the KIVA-3V release 2 program coupled with an in-house chemical solver. A detailed chemical kinetics mechanism with 10 species and 19 reversible reactions is used for the H₂/air mixture in both the pre-chamber and the main chamber. The results show that moving the spark ignition location farther from the orifice significantly reduces the 0−10% mass fraction burn period. By analyzing the local Mach number, turbulence kinetic energy and turbulence length scale, the compressibility and turbulence level of the jet flow are evaluated. Further analysis of the OH mass fraction distribution identifies three regions in the hot jet, i.e. extinction region, just-igniting region and combustion region. A critical Damköhler number of 0.3 is determined to separate the extinction region from the other regions. Meanwhile, transition Damköhler numbers ranging from 0.3 to 0.6 are determined in the just-igniting region.