Thermoacoustic instability is the result of a positive coupling between the acoustic field in the duct and the heat release rate fluctuations from the flame. Recently, in several turbulent combustors, it has been observed that the onset of thermoacoustic instability is preceded by intermittent oscillations, which consist of bursts of periodic oscillations amidst regions of aperiodic oscillations. Quantitative analysis of the intermittency route to thermoacoustic instability has been performed hitherto using the pressure oscillations alone. We perform experiments on a laboratory-scale bluff-body-stabilized turbulent combustor with a backward-facing step at the inlet to obtain simultaneous data of acoustic pressure and heat release rate fluctuations. With this, we show that the onset of thermoacoustic instability is a phenomenon of mutual synchronization between the acoustic pressure and the heat release rate signals, thus emphasizing the importance of the coupling between these non-identical oscillators. We demonstrate that the stable operation corresponds to desynchronized aperiodic oscillations, which, with an increase in the mean velocity of the flow, transition to synchronized periodic oscillations. In between these states, there exists a state of intermittent phase synchronized oscillations, wherein the two oscillators are synchronized during the periodic epochs and desynchronized during the aperiodic epochs of their oscillations. Furthermore, we discover two different types of limit cycle oscillations in our system. We notice a significant increase in the linear correlation between the acoustic pressure and the heat release rate oscillations during the transition from a lower-amplitude limit cycle to a higher-amplitude limit cycle. Further, we present a phenomenological model that qualitatively captures all of the dynamical states of synchronization observed in the experiment. Our analysis shows that the times at which vortices that are shed from the inlet step reach the bluff body play a dominant role in determining the behaviour of the limit cycle oscillations.

We perform an experimental and theoretical study to investigate the interaction between an external harmonic excitation and a self-excited oscillatory mode ($f_{n0}$) of a prototypical thermoacoustic system, a horizontal Rijke tube. Such an interaction can lead to forced synchronization through the routes of phase locking or suppression. We characterize the transition in the synchronization behaviour of the forcing and the response signals of the acoustic pressure while the forcing parameters, i.e. amplitude ($A_{f}$) and frequency ($f_{f}$) of forcing are independently varied. Further, suppression is categorized into synchronous quenching and asynchronous quenching depending upon the value of frequency detuning ($|\,f_{n0}-f_{f}|$). When the applied forcing frequency is close to the natural frequency of the system, the suppression in the amplitude of the self-excited oscillation is known as synchronous quenching. However, this suppression is associated with resonant amplification of the forcing signal, leading to an overall increase in the response amplitude of oscillations. On the other hand, an almost 80 % reduction in the root mean square value of the response oscillation is observed when the system is forced for a sufficiently large value of the frequency detuning (only for $f_{f}<f_{n0}$). Such a reduction in amplitude occurs due to asynchronous quenching where resonant amplification of the forcing signal does not occur, as the frequency detuning is significantly high. Further, the results from a reduced-order model developed for a horizontal Rijke tube show a qualitative agreement with the dynamics observed in experiments. The relative phase between the acoustic pressure ($p^{\prime }$) and the heat release rate ($\dot{q}^{\prime }$) oscillations in the model explains the occurrence of maximum reduction in the pressure amplitude due to asynchronous quenching. Such a reduction occurs when the positive coupling between $p^{\prime }$ and $\dot{q}^{\prime }$ is disrupted and their interaction results in overall acoustic damping, although both of them oscillate at the forcing frequency. Our study on the phenomenon of asynchronous quenching thus presents new possibilities to suppress self-sustained oscillations in fluid systems in general.

Oscillatory instabilities, although ubiquitous in nature, are undesirable in many situations such as biological systems, swaying of bridges and skyscrapers, aero-acoustic flutter, prey-predator and disease spread models, and thermoacoustic systems, where they exhibit large amplitude periodic oscillations. In the present study, we aim to study the suppression mechanism of such undesired oscillations in a pair of thermoacoustic oscillators, also known as horizontal Rijke tubes. These oscillators are coupled through a connecting tube whose length and diameter are varied as coupling parameters. With the variation of these parameters, we show the first experimental evidence of rich dynamical phenomena such as synchronization, amplitude death, and phase-flip bifurcation in coupled identical thermoacoustic oscillators. We discover that when frequency and amplitude mismatch are introduced between these oscillators, quenching of oscillations in one or both the oscillators occurs with further ease, through the mechanisms of amplitude death and partial amplitude death. Finally, we show that the effectiveness of coupling is sensitive to the dimensions of the connecting tube which can be directly correlated with the time delay and coupling strength of the system.

Thermoacoustic instability, caused by a positive feedback between the unsteady heat release and the acoustic field in a combustor, is a major challenge faced in most practical combustors such as those used in rockets and gas turbines. We employ the synchronization theory for understanding the coupling between the unsteady heat release and the acoustic field of a thermoacoustic system. Interactions between coupled subsystems exhibiting different collective dynamics such as periodic, quasiperiodic, and chaotic oscillations are addressed. Even though synchronization studies have focused on different dynamical states separately, synchronous behaviour of two coupled systems exhibiting a quasiperiodic route to chaos has not been studied. In this study, we report the first experimental observation of different synchronous behaviours between two subsystems of a thermoacoustic system exhibiting such a transition as reported in Kabiraj et al. [Chaos 22, 023129 (2012)]. A rich variety of synchronous behaviours such as phase locking, intermittent phase locking, and phase drifting are observed as the dynamics of such subsystem change. The observed synchronization behaviour is further characterized using phase locking value, correlation coefficient, and relative mean frequency. These measures clearly reveal the boundaries between different states of synchronization.

No abstract