Nonlinear self-excited thermoacoustic oscillations appear in systems involving confined combustion in the form of coupled acoustic pressure oscillations and unsteady heat release rate. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear transition undergone by thermoacoustic oscillations to flame blowout via intermittency, in response to variation in the location of the combustion source with respect to the acoustic field of the confinement. A ducted laminar premixed conical flame, stabilized on a circular jet exit with a fully developed exit velocity profile, was investigated. Transition to limit cycle oscillations from a non-oscillatory state was observed to occur via a subcritical Hopf bifurcation. Limit cycle oscillations underwent a further bifurcation to quasi-periodic oscillations characterized by the repeated formation of elongated necks in the flame that pinch off as pockets of unburned fuel–air mixture. The quasi-periodic state loses stability, resulting in an intermittent state identified as type II through recurrence analysis of phase space trajectories reconstructed from the acoustic pressure time trace. In this state, the flame undergoes repeated lift-off and reattachment. Instantaneous flame images suggest that the intermittent flame behaviour is influenced by jet flow dynamics.

Complex thermoacoustic oscillations are observed experimentally in a simple laboratory combustor that burns lean premixed fuel-air mixture, as a result of nonlinear interaction between the acoustic field and the combustion processes. The application of nonlinear time series analysis, particularly techniques based on phase space reconstruction from acquired pressure data, reveals rich dynamical behavior and the existence of several complex states. A route to chaos for thermoacoustic instability is established experimentally for the first time. We show that, as the location of the heat source is gradually varied, self-excited periodic thermoacoustic oscillations undergo transition to chaos via the Ruelle-Takens scenario.

Bifurcation analysis is performed on experimental data obtained from a simple setup comprising ducted laminar premixed conical flames in order to investigate the features of nonlinear thermoacoustic oscillations. It is observed that as the bifurcation parameter is varied, the system undergoes a series of bifurcations leading to characteristically different nonlinear oscillations. Through the application of nonlinear time series analysis to pressure and flame (CH* chemiluminescence) intensity time traces, these oscillations are characterized as periodic, aperiodic, or chaotic oscillations, and subsequently the nature of the obtained bifurcations is explained based on dynamical systems theory. Nonlinear interaction between the flames and the acoustic modes of the duct is clearly reflected in the high speed flame images acquired simultaneously with pressure time series.

We experimentally investigated the noise-induced dynamics of a prototypical thermoacoustic system undergoing a subcritical Hopf bifurcation to limit cycle oscillations. The study was performed prior to the bistable regime. Analysis of the characteristics of pressure oscillations in the combustor and fluctuations in the heat release rate from the flame-the two physical entities involved in thermoacoustic coupling-at increasing levels of noise indicated precursors to the Hopf bifurcation. These precursors were further identified to be a result of coherence resonance.

This article reports nonlinear bifurcations observed in a laboratory scale, turbulent combustor operating under imperfectly premixed mode with global equivalence ratio as the control parameter. The results indicate that the dynamics of thermoacoustic instability correspond to quasi-periodic bifurcation to low-dimensional, deterministic chaos, a route that is common to a variety of dissipative nonlinear systems. The results support the recent identification of bifurcation scenarios in a laminar premixed flame combustor (Kabiraj et al., Chaos: Interdiscip. J. Nonlinear Sci. 22, 023129 (2012)) and extend the observation to a practically relevant combustor configuration.