Design of Counter Flow Burner for Oxy-Combustion Studies Using CFD

Flat flames are useful for studying the fundamental physics of combustion through laser diagnostics and comparison with commercially (or open source) available 1D software such as Chemkin or Cantera. A counter flow burner is capable of producing this flat flame by achieving a flat velocity profile along the outlet. However, what is necessary to achieve this is not readily available. In order to find the optimal design parameters for a counter flow burner, different geometries and velocities were tested at the University of Alabama using Ansys Fluent CFD software. The geometry was axisymmetric and oriented horizontally on the xy-plane. The design of this burner was aimed at reducing the boundary layer while keeping the radial velocity at a minimum. The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of varying the angle, nozzle length, filet radius, inlet to outlet ratio, and velocity on the boundary layer and radial velocity of a counter flow burner.