Direct numerical simulation of a turbulent diffusion flame impinged by an external electric field

It is well-known that electric fields are very efficient tools to actively controlling the multiple aspects of combustion. Laboratory experiments have shown that the appropriate use of an external electric field can extinguish a flame, reduce its soot, CO, and nitrogen oxide emissions, and vary its lift-off height. The numerical simulation of these phenomena has remained elusive to the scientific community because of the physical and numerical complexity of the physical phenomena that regulate this interaction. In this study, we present new calculations performed using a multi-component compressible Navier--Stokes solver, called HTR solver (Di Renzo et al., Comp. Phys. Comm. 2020), which has been modified in order to include the effects of the ion transport due to electric fields. A peculiar aspect of this solver is its implementation in the task-based environment provided by the Legion runtime system, which makes the solver highly scalable and portable on machines with heterogeneous architectures. The presented calculation will focus on the modifications induced by an external electric field on a diffusion flame of methane and air developing in a turbulent temporal shear layer.