LES modeling of gas turbine combustor using Nek5000

Understanding the behavior of fuel and combustion within gas turbine combustors is key to the stable operation of engines. The fuel properties may also have significant impacts on the flame stability, structure and shape during engine operation. These combustors operate at very lean conditions and lean blow out (LBO) can occur in the event of flame instability. In this study, wall-resolved large-eddy simulations (WRLES) of the turbulent flow in the Army Research Laboratory's midsize combustor (ARC-M1) were performed using a high-order spectral element method Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, Nek5000. The statistical behaviors of the turbulent structures within the ARC-M1 are first validated against the available experimental data and further analyzed using proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) to investigate the flow structures and advance turbulence models for engineering simulations.