About the project
The aim of the project is to further develop the wavelet adaptive multiresolution representation (WAMR) method for modelling interactions observed in hydrogen energy production between intrinsic flame instabilities (IFIs) and turbulent flows. It will also investigate and analyse these interactions based on the data from WAMR
Hydrogen will be, among the synthetic fuels, the preferable energy carrier able to address the spatial and temporal separation between energy production (renewable source) and consumption. It is carbon-free and very well-suited for easy and inexpensive long-distance transport and for long-term storage. Thermochemical processes (gas turbines, industrial burners) will continue to be the preferred way to convert and use energy. However, the use of hydrogen presents challenges because its properties are entirely different to conventional fuels. On the other hand, these properties may offer the possibility to increase the efficiency of the thermochemical processes.
The first aspect to be investigated in turbulent lean hydrogen/air flames is the presence of intrinsic flame instabilities (IFIs) that affect flame dynamics, and heat release. Both small-scale and large-scale structures arising from IFIs, visible on the surface of the hydrogen flame, lead to a further significant increase in the propagation velocity of the flame. They also lead to super-adiabatic flame temperatures, which trigger the formation of nitrogen oxides.
Currently we lack physics-based predictive or data-driven models able to represent the interactions of IFIs with turbulent flows.
The first step to investigate this is to create a tool for the high-fidelity numerical simulation of such phenomena. The wavelet adaptive multiresolution representation (WAMR) method, developed by the project’s lead supervisor, uses the wavelet representation to generate a dynamically adaptive 3D grid. The grid efficiently captures with desired accuracy a wide range of spatial scales using a relatively small number of degrees of freedom. Since the wavelet amplitude provides a direct measure of the local error, WAMR allocates resources only in areas where they are needed and can produce an automatically verified solution.
The aim of the project is to further develop WAMR to be efficiently used for massive numerical simulations (both direct numerical simulation (DNS) and Large eddy simulation (LES) on high-performance computing (Tier-1) facilities. It also aims to investigate IFIs-turbulence interaction in the unique database realized with WAMR.
The main tasks of the project are:
- develop and implement an asynchronous time integrator for WAMR
- adapt the WAMR parallel algorithm to new computational resources (hybrid parallelization)
- exploit the use of GPU for some tasks (e.g.: wavelet transform)
- enhancement of the scalability performance up to Exa-scale computing
- collection and production of databases (DNS) for different flame regimes and fuels (to also be used for machine learning training in parallel projects)
- investigation of interaction between diffusion, heat release, and turbulence
- integration into WAMR of classical models as well as data-driven models (developed in parallel projects)
- a-posteriori validation of the models (LES)
