Momentum interchange in a burner bank

The fluid motion, resulting from one, two and four counter-rotating small-scale model burners discharging isothermally into a furnace confinement, is scrutinised experimentally and computationally. Laser Doppler Anemometry measurements are used to provide boundary conditions and validate numerical predictions. Comparisons of measured and predicted results show that good agreement can be achieved with a high mesh resolution together with a second-order differencing scheme using the k-epsilon turbulence model. The measurements indicate that the entrainment of the single burner flow is under-predicted by the CFD model. Predictions indicate, however, that the entrainment rate per burner of the two interacting burner flows is greater than the single how by a factor 2.7, whereas the four burner flows show an entrainment rate of 1.4 times the single flow. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.