CFD simulation for the design of combustor in turbocharger test rig

Abstract

The role of a combustion chamber in a turbocharger test rig is to generate the hot gas. The generated gas should be stable with uniform mass flow as well as required thermodynamic properties. It is done by using wide range of air-fuel (AF) ratio at constant pressure process like a fuel burner. Hence, it is required to design the combustion chamber with suitable empirically derived formulas during the preliminary design stage. Thus the present study addresses the design procedure involved in development of a combustion chamber for a test rig based on the required inlet mass flow rate and temperature for the test section. The reference characteristics (reference area and reference velocity) of the combustor are considered in calculating other dimensions of the combustor. Then, the design data obtained through the formula is validated through CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation. The simulation results showed that, the total pressure drop across the combustor was 0.017 against the assumed ratio of 0.07 at the design stage. It means that the total pressure is almost recovered. The recirculation flow in primary zone and jets of corresponding secondary and dilution zones were also observed. The suggested design procedure can be used to design the combustor.