Flame dynamics in the lean burnout zone of an RQL combustion chamber - response to primary zone velocity fluctuations

Abstract

This study focuses on elucidating the flame dynamics of the lean burnout zone of an Rich-Quench-Lean (RQL) combustion chamber. With a new experimental approach of spatially separating the rich primary zone from the lean burnout zone, the latter can be investigated independently in terms of velocity fluctuations. Acoustically stiff mixing air ports in the lean burnout zone are ensured to prevent any acoustic interaction of the primary crossflow with the secondary mixing air jets. Therefore, defined boundary conditions at the mixing air inlets are used. Resulting no thermoacoustic interaction and additional flame dynamics are generated. In this specific case the lean burnout zone can be treated as a 2-port system allowing the application of existing evaluation methods e.g. acoustic determination of flame-transfer-functions (FTF) from the Rankine-Hugoniot (RH) equation or quantification of the heat release with chemiluminescence in combination with the Multi-Microphone-Method (MMM). Within this research, FTFs acoustically measured with the RH approach are presented and serve as a baseline for comparison with ones measured via a photomultiplier tube (PMT). It is found that the inverse diffusion flame in the burnout zone only reacts to fluctuations in the low frequency range and a clear low pass behavior is observed. The FTFs, calculated via the PMT match those from RH very well. Amplitude weighted phase images, recorded with a high-speed camera setup, visualize changes during excitation which complement and confirm the findings from the FTF.