Review of Combustion Models Used for Studying Physicochemical Processes in Gas Turbine Engine Combustors

Article

Published: 26.10.2026

Published in issue: #10(178)/2026

DOI:

Category: Aviation and Rocket-Space Engineering | Chapter: Thermal, Electric Jet Engines, and Power Plants of Aircrafts

A review of the main combustion models available in both commercial engineering packages and open-source packages used for the numerical analysis of various processes in the combustion chambers of gas turbine engines and gas turbine units is presented. Brief theoretical information is given on two main approaches (species transport and the flamelet model) and on the models included in them, namely the eddy dissipation model, the finite rate chemistry model, the thickened flame model, the laminar flamelet model, and others. For each combustion model, the main features and areas of applicability are indicated, and their main advantages and disadvantages are outlined. Since fuel combustion in aviation combustion chambers is inextricably linked with the gas dynamics of the flow, the influence of turbulence models on the overall quality of the solution is demonstrated. An analysis of available literature sources made it possible to identify the main directions of modeling for gas turbine engine combustion chambers, among which are the study of: emissions of harmful substances (NOx, COx, UHC, soot, and smoke); temperature non-uniformity; the quality of fuel atomization and cooling of the walls of the flame tube of the combustion chamber. By summarizing the information for each research direction, the most frequently used combinations of combustion models and turbulence models are obtained. Quite expectedly, simple combustion models such as the eddy dissipation model are most often used with well-known semi-empirical RANS turbulence models (k–ω SST, RNG k–ε, etc.). This is usually due to the requirements for high computational speed and low computational cost. All the information obtained during the preparation of the review made it possible to formulate general conclusions and recommendations on the problem of modeling the combustion of liquid and gaseous fuels in gas turbine engine combustion chambers.

EDN WFCCTT

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