Computational investigations of the coupling between transient flame dynamics and thermo-acoustic instability in a self-excited resonance combustor

Abstract

Combustion instability due to thermo-acoustic interactions is a critical combustion problem that requires a thorough understanding because of its adverse impact on stable and reliable operation of combustors in high-speed propulsion devices like gas turbines and rockets. This work conducts computational investigations of the coupling between the transient flame dynamics such as the ignition delay and local extinction and the thermo-acoustic instability developed in a self-excited resonance combustor to gain deep insights into the mechanisms of thermo-acoustic instability. A 2D modelling framework that employs different flamelet models (the steady flamelet model and the flamelet/progress variable approach) is developed to enable the examination of the effect of the transient flame dynamics caused by the strong coupling of the turbulent mixing and finite-rate chemical kinetics on the occurrence of thermo-acoustic instability. The models are validated by using the available experimental data for the pressure signal. Parametric studies are performed to examine the effect of the occurrence of the transient flame dynamics, the effect of artificial amplification of the Damköhler number, and the effect of neglecting mixture fraction fluctuations on the predictions of the thermo-acoustic instability. The parametric studies reveal that the occurrence of transient flame dynamics has a strong influence on the onset of the thermo-acoustic instability. Further analysis is then conducted to localise the effect of a particular flame dynamic event, the ignition delay, on the thermo-acoustic instability. The reverse effect of the occurrence of the thermo-acoustic instability on the transient flame dynamics in the combustor is also investigated by examining the temporal evolution of the local flame events in conjunction with the pressure wave propagation. The above observed two-way coupling between the transient flame dynamics (the ignition delay) and the thermo-acoustic instability provides a plausible mechanism of the self-excited and sustained thermo-acoustic instability observed in the combustor despite the fact that the results are obtained from 2D simulations. The same analysis is expected to be extensible to fully 3D simulations.

Keywords:

• Transient flame dynamics
• thermo-acoustic instability
• flamelet models
• ignition delay
• turbulent mixing

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Prof. William Anderson and Dr. W. Z. Hallum at Purdue University for providing the experimental data for the self-excited model rocket combustor and insightful discussions on thermo-acoustic instability. We are grateful to Dr. Venke Sankaran, Dr. Swanand Sardeshkmukh and Dr. Cheng Huang for the useful discussions on the numerical modelling aspect. This work was supported in part through the computational resources provided by Information Technology Research Computing (RCAC) at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.