Response of lean premixed swirl tubular flame to acoustic perturbations

Abstract

This study experimentally examined the response of a lean premixed methane/air swirl tubular flame to the longitudinal acoustic perturbations. Experiments were conducted by varying the acoustic frequency (f0), acoustic power (P0) and inlet air flow rate (QA) to systematically study the acoustic-excited flame dynamics, including the flame stability, flame structure, heat release rate and acoustic pressure fluctuations. The results demonstrated that the lean tubular flame was much sensitive to longitudinal perturbations below 210 Hz. Even at low power of P0, the flame was forced to oscillate intensively when the perturbation was operated in two discontinuous frequency ranges of f0 = 150-200 and f0 = 50-100 Hz, while a weakened oscillation regime was observed in the middle range of f0 =100-150 Hz; a lower frequency (less than 50 Hz) would extinguish the flame. An increase in P0 intensified the flame oscillation under the perturbations of 50-100 Hz, and even resulted in flame lift-off and blow off with f0 between 150 and 200 Hz. In comparison to f0 and P0, the effects of air flow rate (QA) seemed to be weaker. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis was performed to interpret the contributions from the mean mode and fluctuating axial and circumferential modes that led to combustion instability. It was found that as the energy fraction of the axial mode exceeded 5.0%, the flame lift-off appeared in the lean swirl tubular configuration.

Displacement and Extinction of Jet Diffusion Flame Exposed to Speaker-Generated Traveling Sound Waves

“…Bennewitz et al [12] studied the extinction mechanism for a single droplet flame in acoustic standing waves and found that extinction was caused by the temporal increase in the local rate of normal flame strain. This extinction mechanism was also supported by Xiong et al [13][14][15][16]; they further modified the Damköhler number (Da), suitable for acoustic extinction, and the flaming firebrand. Furthermore, droplets can be extinguished when the value of Da drops below 1.0.…”