Influence of Strouhal number on pulsating methane–air coflow jet diffusion flames

Four periodically time-varying methane–air laminar coflow jet diffusion flames, each forced by pulsating the fuel jet's exit velocity Uj sinusoidally with a different modulation frequency wj and with a 50% amplitude variation, have been computed. Combustion of methane has been modeled by using a chemical mechanism with 15 species and 42 reactions, and the solution of the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations has been obtained numerically by using a modified vorticity-velocity formulation in the limit of low Mach number. The effect of wj on temperature and chemistry has been studied in detail. Three different regimes are found depending on the flame's Strouhal number S=awj/Uj, with a denoting the fuel jet radius. For small Strouhal number (S=0.1), the modulation introduces a perturbation that travels very far downstream, and certain variables oscillate at the frequency imposed by the fuel jet modulation. As the Strouhal number grows, the nondimensional frequency approaches the natural frequency of oscillation of the flickering flame (S≃0.2). A coupling with the pulsation frequency enhances the effect of the imposed modulation and a vigorous pinch-off is observed for S=0.25 and S=0.5. Larger values of S confine the oscillation to the jet's near-exit region, and the effects of the pulsation are reduced to small wiggles in the temperature and concentration values. Temperature and species mass fractions change appreciably near the jet centerline, where variations of over 2% for the temperature and 15% and 40% for the CO and OH mass fractions, respectively, are found. Transverse to the jet movement, however, the variations almost disappear at radial distances on the order of the fuel jet radius, indicating a fast damping of the oscillation in the spanwise direction.