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Transient and limit cycle combustion dynamics analysis of turbulent premixed swirling flames

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2017

Paul Palies Open the ORCID record for Paul Palies [Opens in a new window] ,
Milos Ilak  and
Robert Cheng
Paul Palies*
Affiliation:
United Technologies Research Center, 411 Silver Lane, East Hartford, CT 06108, USA
Milos Ilak
Affiliation:
United Technologies Research Center, 411 Silver Lane, East Hartford, CT 06108, USA
Robert Cheng
Affiliation:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd., Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: paliesp@utc.utrc.com
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Abstract

Premixed low swirling flames (methane–air and hydrogen–methane–air) are experimentally investigated for three different regimes. Stable, local transient to instability and limit cycle regimes corresponding to three distinct equivalence ratios are considered. Dynamic mode decomposition is applied to the hydrogen–air–methane flame to retrieve the modes frequencies, growth rates and spatial distributions for each regime. The results indicate that a vortical wave propagating along the flame front is associated with the transition from stability to instability. In addition, it is shown that a key effect on stability is the location of the non-oscillating (0 Hz) flame component. The phase-averaged unsteady motion of the flames over one cycle of oscillation shows the vortical wave rolling up the flame front. The Rayleigh index maps are formed to identify the region of driving and damping of the self-sustained oscillation, while the flame transfer function phase leads to the propagation mode of the perturbations along the flame front. The second mechanism identified concerns the swirl number fluctuation induced by the mode conversion. By utilizing hypotheses for the flow field and the flame structure, it is pointed out that those mechanisms are at work for both flames (methane–air and hydrogen–methane–air) and their effects on the unsteady heat release are determined. Both unsteady heat release contributions, the vortical wave induces flame surface fluctuations and swirl number oscillation induces unsteady turbulent burning velocity, are in phase opposition and of similar amplitudes.

JFM classification

Instability: Instability Reacting Flows: Turbulent reacting flows Vortex Flows: Vortex shedding
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 830 , 10 November 2017 , pp. 681 - 707
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Copyright
© 2017 Cambridge University Press 

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