Learning-Based Super-Resolution Imaging of Turbulent Flames in Both Time and 3D Space Using Double GAN Architectures

This article presents a spatiotemporal super-resolution (SR) reconstruction model for two common flame types, a swirling and then a jet flame, using double generative adversarial network (GAN) architectures. The approach develops two sets of generator and discriminator networks to learn topographic and temporal features and infer high spatiotemporal resolution turbulent flame structure from supplied low-resolution counterparts at two time points. In this work, numerically simulated 3D turbulent swirling and jet flame structures were used as training data to update the model parameters of the GAN networks. The effectiveness of our model was then thoroughly evaluated in comparison to other traditional interpolation methods. An upscaling factor of 2 in space, which corresponded to an 8-fold increase in the total voxel number and a double time frame acceleration, was used to verify the model’s ability on a swirling flame. The results demonstrate that the assessment metrics, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), overall error (ER), and structural similarity index (SSIM), with average values of 35.27 dB, 1.7%, and 0.985, respectively, in the spatiotemporal SR results, can reach acceptable accuracy. As a second verification to highlight the present model’s potential universal applicability to flame data of diverse types and shapes, we applied the model to a turbulent jet flame and had equal success. This work provides a different method for acquiring high-resolution 3D structure and further boosting repeat rate, demonstrating the potential of deep learning technology for combustion diagnosis.