Combustion dynamics constitutes one of the most challenging areas in combustion research. Many facets of this subject have been investigated over the past few decades for their fundamental and practical implications. Substantial progress has been accomplished in understanding analysis, modeling, and simulation. Detailed laboratory experiments and numerical computations have provided a wealth of information on elementary dynamical processes such as the response of flames to variable strain, vortex rollup, coupling between flames and acoustic modulations, and perturbed flame collisions with boundaries. Much recent work has concerned the mechanisms driving instabilities in premixed combustion and the coupling between pressure waves and combustion with application to the problem of instability in modern low NO x heavyduty gas turbine combustors. Progress in numerical modeling has allowed simulations of dynamical flames interacting with pressure waves. On this basis, it has been possible to devise predictive methods for instabilities. Important efforts have also been directed at the development of the related subject of combustion control. Research has focused on methods, sensors, actuators, control algorithms, and systems integration. In recent years, scaling from laboratory experiments to practical devices has been achieved with some successebut limitations have also been revealed. Active control of combustion has also evolved in various directions. A number of experiments on laboratory-scale combustors have shown that the amplitude of combustion instabilities could be reduced by applying control principles. Full-scale terrestrial application to gas turbine systems have allowed an increase of the stability margin of these machines. Feedback principles are also being explored to control the point of operation of combustors and engines. Operating point control has special importance in the gas turbine field since it can be used to avoid operation in unstable regions near the lean blowoff limits. More generally, closed loop feedback concepts are useful if one wishes to improve the combustion process as demonstrated by applications to automotive engines. Many future developments of combustion will use such concepts for tuning, optimization, and emissions reduction. This article proposes a broad survey of these fast-moving areas of research.

Combustion dynamics and control: Progress and challenges

A power-law flame wrinkling model for LES of premixed turbulent combustion Part I: non-dynamic formulation and initial tests

Nitric oxide formation in gas turbine combustion depends on four key factors: flame stabilization, heat transfer, fuel–air mixing and combustion instability. The design of modern gas turbine burners requires delicate compromises between fuel efficiency, emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and combustion stability. Burner designs allowing substantial NOx reduction are often prone to combustion oscillations. These oscillations also change the NOx fields. Being able to predict not only the main species field in a burner but also the pollutant and the oscillation levels is now a major challenge for combustion modelling. This must include a realistic treatment of unsteady acoustic phenomena (which create instabilities) and also of heat transfer mechanisms (convection and radiation) which control NOx generation.In this work, large-eddy simulation (LES) is applied to a realistic gas turbine combustion chamber configuration where pure methane is injected through multiple holes in a cone-shaped burner. In addition to a non-reactive simulation, this article presents three reactive simulations and compares them to experimental results. The first reactive simulation neglects effects of cooling air on flame stabilization and heat losses by radiation and convection. The second reactive simulation shows how cooling air and heat transfer affect nitric oxide emissions. Finally, the third reactive simulation shows the effects of combustion instability on nitric oxide emissions. Additionally, the combustion instability is analysed in detail, including the evaluation of the terms in the acoustic energy equation and the identification of the mechanism driving the oscillation.Results confirm that LES of gas turbine combustion requires not only an accurate chemical scheme and realistic heat transfer models but also a proper description of the acoustics in order to predict nitric oxide emissions and pressure oscillation levels simultaneously.

https://doc.rero.ch/record/292533/files/S0022112006003156.pdf

Large-eddy simulation and experimental study of heat transfer, nitric oxide emissions and combustion instability in a swirled turbulent high-pressure burner

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00811961/document

Large Eddy Simulation of combustion instabilities in a lean partially premixed swirled flame

A power-law flame wrinkling model for LES of premixed turbulent combustion Part II: dynamic formulation

In this paper we present a method that numerically solves the full two-dimensional, time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations with species transport, mixing, and chemical reaction between species. The generality of the formulation permits the solution of flows in which deflagrations, detonations, or transitions from deflagration to detonation are found. The solution procedure is embodied in the RICE computer program. RICE is an Eulerian finite difference computer code that uses the Implicit Continuous-fluid Eulerian (ICE) technique to solve the governing equations. We first present the differential equations of motion and the solution procedure of the RICE program. Next, a method is described for artificially thickening the combustion zone to dimensions resolvable by the computational mesh. This is done in such a way that the physical flame speed and jump conditions across the flame front are preserved. Finally, the results of two example calculations are presented. In the first, the artificial thickening technique is used to solve a one-dimensional laminar flame problem. In the second, the results of a full two-dimensional calculation of unsteady combustion in two connected chambers are detailed.

/pdf/a-numerical-method-for-two-dimensional-unsteady-reacting-q8htvenvd7.pdf

P.J. O'Rourke

Papers

A numerical method for two dimensional unsteady reacting flows