Numerical Investigation of Application of MicroMix Combustion Technology to Aero Engine Combustor

Abstract: The demand for CO2-free transportation of persons and goods by air has become more urgent in recent years in order to meet the challenges of the global climate change. Future aircrafts are required to apply fuels which don’t leave a significant CO2 footprint behind. In order to reach a zero CO2-emission, Hydrogen based on regenerative energy sources (“Green Hydrogen”) is considered as an alternative fuel for the aero engines.

One major challenge on the path of development for Hydrogen-fueled aero engines is the safe combustion of Hydrogen and with low NOx emissions at the same time. The MicroMix technology application to industrial gas turbine was researched and developed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) and B&B-AGEMA. Therefore, this technology has a great potential for application in aero engines. Initial research and development of a MicroMix configuration applicable for aero engines have been started in a collaboration of both companies.

In order to develop and investigate basic geometric configurations high level numerical combustion simulations including Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and complex chemistry combustion have been performed. The LES results in this paper show for an exemplary MicroMix configuration the impact of various numerical and geometrical parameters on the resolution of the numerical results, in particular on vortex interactions of neighboring configurations.