Oldham, Keturah; Lignell, David; Stephens, Victoria (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Lignell, David (Brigham Young University, Chemical Engineering)
Soot is an important but computationally expensive aspect of modeling combustion. To thoroughly predict the way that soot acts, it is necessary to know the number and size of every soot particle in a situation. Since that is clearly not practical, there are a variety of methods to approximate the soot size distribution: the method of moments, assuming monodispersion, and a sectional method. To facilitate the incorporation of these soot models into various applications, a C++ library including these models was created. As part of this C++ library, a sectional model was implemented. This splits the overall soot size distribution into discrete sections, then calculates the soot chemistry involved with these sections. To implement this into the library, a partial sectional model (including only coagulation) was first implemented in Python and compared to verified values. This model was then written in C++, expanded to include the various other soot mechanisms (e.g., growth, oxidation), and incorporated into the larger soot library. The sectional model as part of the soot library will be tested for validity. In summary, to enable the combustion simulation community to more easily simulate soot, a soot library that includes several models was created and expanded to include a sectional model. The use of these models enables modeling to be more accurate due to the easy inclusion of soot in a comparatively computationally inexpensive manner.