Sensitivity calculations on a soot model using a partially stirred reactor

• Main Author: Wu, Nathan Gabriel
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Partially stirred reactor; Sensitivity analysis; Soot modeling
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2010-05-1472

Sensitivity analysis was performed on a soot model using a partially stirred reactor (PaSR) in order to determine the effects of mixing model parameters on soot scalar values. The sensitivities of the mixture fraction zeta and progress variable C to the mixing model constant C_phi were calculated; these values were used to compute the sensitivity of water mass fraction Y_H2O to C_phi and several soot quantities to soot moments. Results were validated by evaluating the mean mixture fraction sensitivity and a long simulation time case. From the baseline case, it was noted that soot moment sensitivities tended to peak on the rich side of the stoichiometric mixture fraction zeta_st. Timestep, number of notional particles, mixing timescale tau_mix, and residence time tau_res were varied independently. Choices for timestep and notional particle count were shown to be sufficient to capture relevant scalar profiles, and did not greatly affect sensitivity calculations. Altering tau_mix or tau_res was shown to affect sensitivity to mixing, and it was concluded that the soot model is more heavily influenced by the chemistry than mixing. === text