Towards developing high-fidelity yet compact skeletal mechanisms: An effective, efficient and expertise-free strategy for systematic mechanism reduction

Abstract This study explored the potential of integrating reduction methods with different features for systematic mechanism reduction. Based on our two recently developed/optimized reduction methods, sensitivity analysis method and unimportant reaction elimination, a generalized strategy for systematic reduction of large detailed mechanisms was proposed. This strategy was firstly used to reduce the detailed mechanism for n-dodecane containing 2,115 species. A compact skeletal mechanism with 150 species was obtained, and close agreement with the detailed mechanism was achieved. Next, the detailed mechanism for a three-component biodiesel surrogate with 3,299 species was successfully reduced to a skeletal one with 179 species. Extensive validations were performed to show the high fidelity of the obtained skeletal mechanism. After demonstrating the effectiveness and reduction capability of the proposed strategy, its efficient and expertise-free features were elaborated. This strategy not only greatly lowers the threshold for reducing large detailed mechanisms, but also significantly saves the computational cost and human time effort in mechanism reduction process, while exhibiting satisfactory reduction capability to generate high-fidelity yet compact skeletal mechanisms.