Flame Transfer Functions and Dynamics of a Closely Confined Premixed Bluff Body Stabilised Flame With Swirl

Abstract

Abstract The Flame Transfer Function (FTF) and flame dynamics of a single, highly swirled, closely confined, premixed flame is studied over a wide range of operating conditions at a fixed perturbation level at the dump plane. The equivalence ratio and bulk velocity are varied in order to examine the important ratio of flame height to velocity in scaling the flame response function. The enclosure geometry is kept constant, and therefore due to the close confinement and varying flame height, strong flame-wall interactions are present for some operating conditions. The effect of these interactions on the FTF due to changes in the “relative” or “effective confinement” of the flame can therefore be studied. When the equivalence ratio is sufficiently high, and therefore the effective confinement sufficiently small, modulations, or dips, in the gain and phase of the FTF are observed, due to interference of the perturbations created at the swirler and at the dump plane. Due to the small length scales and relatively high velocities in the current configuration, the dip is at a high frequency and spans a wide range of frequencies compared to similar studies which have previously identified similar phenomena. It is also observed that when the equivalence ratio was decreased, increasing the effective confinement, a critical point is reached where the modulations are suppressed. This is linked to a temporal shift in the heat release rate at the downstream location where the flame impinges on the combustion chamber walls during the oscillation cycle. The shift causes a decrease in the expected level of interference, demonstrating that the effective confinement is an important parameter to consider for the nature of the FTF response. Additionally, a Distributed Time Lag (DTL) model with two distinct time lags, capturing the swirler perturbations and the perturbations at the inlet, is successfully applied to the FTFs. The model provides a simple way to accurately capture the two dominant time scales in the problem without the need of prior knowledge of the cause of the perturbations, and a simple expression to recreate the complex valued FTF. In addition the model also provides insight into the time scales of the problem, demonstrating in the current work that time scales recovered from the DTL analysis are offset from simple Strouhal number scaling, due to the effects of increasing effective confinement.