European Bio-Energy Projects

Expected impact and exploitation
In terms of dissemination and exploitation, it is
necessary to specify that the results of the
R&D project will be to prove that the NM of
turbulent combustion applied to the simulation
of combustion systems is relevant and successful
to a wide range of applications. Therefore once
the general concept of the integration of CFD
and NM has been assessed, the general tools
will be disseminated in the EU while the specific
application tools will remain the property of
the partners.
The universities participating in the consortium
guarantee the scientific and technological
dissemination of research results. The dissemination
policy will be mainly based on the
production of scientific papers and participation
to workshops, the invitation of potential clients
on the system platform and the production of a
detailed and interactive website.
Moreover, the industrial partners have the
capability to directly exploit the results, as well
as to improve the developed system for industrial
purposes.
Progress to date
The project is in progress. The start date was
1 March 2002 and the end date is 28 February
2005.
In the first year several CFD solvers have been
investigated taking the various modelling
approaches of turbulent reacting flows into
account. In figure 1, the calculated velocity
distribution inside a combustion chamber
assumed as a test case is shown as an example.
Figure 1: Velocity distribution inside combustion
chamber.
Combustion models have been deeply analysed.
To establish block diagrams and algorithms a
functional approach is adopted. The input and
output variable domains have been defined in
relation to the various models.
A first chemical kinetics database referred to a
methane-air 2D combustor has been produced
adopting an adiabatic Perfectly Stirred Reactor
(PSR) model. On the basis of this database
unconstrained and constrained regression tools
have been tested. Constraints have been
introduced by the specie error function as quality
constraints, treated by means of a quadratic
programming technique. Clustering and Multi
Layer Perceptron (MLP) have shown the best
approximation results. Then a special MLP training
technique has been adopted. Such a technique
is based on constraints related to the atoms
conservation and positiveness of the specie
concentrations by means of a penalty function.
PSR CHEMKIN II software and a Detailed
Chemical Kinetics Neural Model (DCKNM) based
on a MLP have been integrated into a CFD solver.
The two developed tools have been utilised to
carry out calculations on the methane-air 2D
combustor. Comparisons between the two
calculations have been carried out. Results
showed that flow field quantities were estimated
with not relevant differences. In figure 2, results
for O2 concentration and temperature distribution
are reported. The CPU time to achieve
convergence of the CFD with integrated PSR
CHEMKIN II software has been 500 times greater
than that used by CFD integrating DCKNM.
117
Figure 2: O2 iso-concentration curves and Temperature
fields [K].
INFORMATION
References: NNE5-316-2001
Programme:
FP5 - Energy, Environment and
Sustainable Development
Title:
Neural Modelling for Reactive Turbulent
Flow Simulation – NEMORETS
Duration: 36 months
Contact point:
Giovanni Cerri
Università Roma Tre
Tel: +39-065-593819
Fax: +39-065-593732
cerri@uniroma3.it
Partners:
Università Roma Tre (I)
Alstom Power UK (UK)
Cinar (UK)
TU Dresden (D)
Université Libre de Bruxelles (B)
EC Scientific Officer:
José Riesgo Villanueva
Tel: +32-2-2957939
Fax: +32-2-2966261
jose.riesgo@cec.eu.int
Status: Ongoing