Effect of radial flame position on the flow topology of a reacting jet in crossflow*

Reacting jet in crossflow (RJICF) is a canonical flow topology encountered in various relevant applications. In the current study, we investigate the effect of the radial flame position on the near-field and far-field flow dynamics of a reacting jet in crossflow using Large Eddy Simulation (LES). We present here two reacting cases – a) a pure methane jet into a crossflow of air, where the flame is present radially outside the jet shear layer (the R1 case), and b) a diluted methane jet into a crossflow of oxygen, where the flame is present radially inside the shear layer (the R2 case). For the R1 case, we observe the growth of the shear layer vortices and the development of the counter-rotating vortex pair. For the R2 case, the vorticity does not concentrate into discrete vortices and the counter-rotating vortex pair lacks the characteristics double-lobed coherent structure. These results show that the variation in the radial flame location introduces significant and novel changes in the flow topology of reacting jet in crossflow dynamics.