Reacting flow in an industrial gas turbine combustor: LES and experimental analysis

Bulat, Ghenadie; Fedina, E.; Fureby, Christer; Meier, Wolfgang; Stopper, Ulrich

doi:10.1016/j.proci.2014.05.015

Cited by 58 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Specifically, a modified version of the reactingFOAM solver is used -this has been applied in previous LES studies of turbulent combustion [48][49][50]. The reactive flow equations are the Favre-filtered Navier-Stokes equations of mass, momentum, species mass fraction and energy.…”

Section: Numerical Methods For Flame Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of combustion instability limit cycle oscillations by combining flame describing function simulations with a thermoacoustic network model

Han

Morgans

2015

Combustion and Flame

203

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a b s t r a c t Accurate prediction of limit cycle oscillations resulting from combustion instability has been a long-standing challenge. The present work uses a coupled approach to predict the limit cycle characteristics of a combustor, developed at Cambridge University, for which experimental data are available (Balachandran, Ph.D. thesis, 2005). The combustor flame is bluff-body stabilised, turbulent and partially-premixed. The coupled approach combines Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in order to characterise the weakly non-linear response of the flame to acoustic perturbations (the Flame Describing Function (FDF)), with a low order thermoacoustic network model for capturing the acoustic wave behaviour. The LES utilises the open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) toolbox, OpenFOAM, with a low Mach number approximation for the flow-field and combustion modelled using the PaSR (Partially Stirred Reactor) model with a global one-step chemical reaction mechanism for ethylene/air. LES has not previously been applied to this partially-premixed flame, to our knowledge. Code validation against experimental data for unreacting and partially-premixed reacting flows without and with inlet velocity perturbations confirmed that both the qualitative flame dynamics and the quantitative response of the heat release rate were captured with very reasonable accuracy. The LES was then used to obtain the full FDF at conditions corresponding to combustion instability, using harmonic velocity forcing across six frequencies and four forcing amplitudes. The low order thermoacoustic network modelling tool used was the open source OSCILOS (http://www.oscilos.com). Validation of its use for limit cycle prediction was performed for a well-documented experimental configuration, for which both experimental FDF data and limit cycle data were available. The FDF data from the LES for the present test case was then imported into the OSCILOS geometry network and limit cycle oscillations of frequency 342 Hz and normalised velocity amplitude of 0.26 were predicted. These were in good agreement with the experimental values of 348 Hz and 0.21 respectively. This work thus confirms that a coupled numerical prediction of limit cycle behaviour is possible using an entirely open source numerical framework.

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Section: Numerical Methods For Flame Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of combustion instability limit cycle oscillations by combining flame describing function simulations with a thermoacoustic network model

Han

Morgans

2015

Combustion and Flame

203

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“…The diameter of the pre-chamber and combustion chamber exit are about 0.086 m and 0.050 m [26]. Fresh oxidant streams, coming from the compressor at 0.3 MPa, enter the combustion chamber after being preheated to approximately 685 K [20]. Most of the air enters the combustion chamber from the radical swriler with a bulk velocity of 4.87 m/s and the rest enters from the panel air nozzle which is mounted in the vicinity to the sidewall of the combustion chamber [27].…”

Section: Model Combustion Chambermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fuel stream is divided into two parts. The main stream injection with a high degree of premixing introduced from premixed nozzle which is mounted on the radical swirler to control the combustion temperature and thus ensures low NOx emissions inside the combustion chamber [20]. The pilot fuel stream introduced from the pilot fuel nozzle which is mounted on the pilot surface to form a pilot diffusion flame in the pre-chamber and thus ignites the incoming fresh fuel/oxidant streams to ensure flame stabilization under lower load conditions of the real gas turbine [27].…”

Section: Model Combustion Chambermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unsteady computing and modeling strategies which take into account unsteadiness and in-homogeneities are alternative numerical solutions to further improve the numerical calculation precision [19]. It is noted that great advances in the development of Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) and Large Eddy Simulations (LES) have occurred due to the large improvement in computing power and the rise of massively parallel architectures [20]. Up to present, the DNS approach still has difficulty dealing with the aeronautical reactive flows due to the large computational resource needed, especially in high Reynold number turbulence flow [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Large Eddy Simulation of the PVC Behavior in both Non-Reacting and Reacting Flows with Different Reynold Numbers

Shi¹,

Fu²,

Shen³

et al. 2016

IJHT

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The effects of the Reynold number on the precessing vortex core (PVC) behavior in both non-reacting and reacting flows are numerically studied using a three-dimensional fully compressible large eddy simulation method. The predicted results show that a central toroidal recirculation zone (CTRZ) is generated in the vicinity of the axis of the combustor which is dominated by many small-scale vortices. Meanwhile, two smaller external recirculation zones (ERZs) are established in the vicinity of the sidewall of the combustion chamber. Under combustion conditions, the flow field tends to become complex, and the structure of CTRZ is more irregular compared to that of the non-reacting flow. An increase in the inlet Reynold number enlarges the magnitude of CTRZ and thus produces a more regular and stronger structure of the PVC inside the combustion chamber. Consequently, the breakdown positon of the PVC moves downstream under higher Reynold numbers. The structure of PVCs in the reacting flow mostly located in the regions of the unburned reactants within the per-chamber which is relatively smaller and irregular compared to that in the non-reacting flow. There is a linear increase in pressure oscillations amplitude and frequency with an increase in the inlet Reynold numbers. However, the Strouhal number remains relatively constant in both non-reacting and reacting flows. There is also an anticipated decrease in pressure oscillations and frequency in the reacting flow due to the compressibility effect in the reacting flow.

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“…• Type 1: Adiabatic walls: the majority of recent LESs simply consider the walls to be adiabatic [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][19][20][21][22] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupling heat transfer and large eddy simulation for combustion instability prediction in a swirl burner

Kraus

Selle

Poinsot

2018

Combustion and Flame

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OATAO is an open access repository that collects the work of Toulouse researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible. This is an author-deposited version published in : http://oatao. Large eddy simulations (LES) of combustion instabilities are often performed with simplified thermal wall boundary conditions, typically adiabatic walls. However, wall temperatures directly affect the gas temperatures and therefore the sound speed field. They also control the flame itself, its stabilization characteristics and its response to acoustic waves, changing the flame transfer functions (FTFs) of many combustion chambers. This paper presents an example of LES of turbulent flames fully coupled to a heat conduction solver providing the temperature in the combustor walls. LES results obtained with the fully coupled approach are compared to experimental data and to LES performed with adiabatic walls for a swirled turbulent methane/air burner installed at Engler-Bunte-Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Stuttgart. Results show that the fully coupled approach provides reasonable wall temperature estimations and that heat conduction in the combustor walls strongly affects both the mean state and the unstable modes of the combustor. The unstable thermoacoustic mode observed experimentally at 750 Hz is captured accurately by the coupled simulation but not by the adiabatic one, suggesting that coupling LES with heat conduction solvers within combustor walls may be necessary in other configurations in order to capture flame dynamics.

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Reacting flow in an industrial gas turbine combustor: LES and experimental analysis

Cited by 58 publications

References 26 publications

Prediction of combustion instability limit cycle oscillations by combining flame describing function simulations with a thermoacoustic network model

Prediction of combustion instability limit cycle oscillations by combining flame describing function simulations with a thermoacoustic network model

Large Eddy Simulation of the PVC Behavior in both Non-Reacting and Reacting Flows with Different Reynold Numbers

Coupling heat transfer and large eddy simulation for combustion instability prediction in a swirl burner

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