Impact of swirl and bluff-body on the transfer function of premixed flames

Abstract

The frequency response of three lean methane/air flames submitted to flowrate perturbations is analyzed for flames featuring the same equivalence ratio and thermal power, but a different stabilization mechanism. The first flame is stabilized by a central bluff body without swirl, the second one by the same bluff body with the addition of swirl and the last one only by swirl without central insert. In the two last cases, the swirl level is roughly the same. These three flames feature different shapes and heat release distributions, but their Flame Transfer Function (FTF) feature about the same phase lag at low frequencies. The gain of the FTF also shows the same behavior for the flame stabilized by the central insert without swirl and the one fully aerodynamically stabilized by swirl. Shedding of vortical structures from the injector nozzle that grow and rollup the flame tip controls the FTF of these flames. The flame stabilized by the swirler-plus-bluff-body system features a peculiar response with a large drop of the FTF gain around a frequency at which large swirl number oscillations are observed. Velocity measurements in cold flow conditions reveal a strong reduction of the size of the vortical structures shed from the injector lip at this forcing condition. The flame stabilized aerodynamically only by swirl and the one stabilized by the bluff body without swirl do not exhibit any FTF gain drop at low frequencies. In the former case, large swirl number oscillations are still identified, but large vortical structures shed from the nozzle also persist at the same forcing frequency in the cold flow response. These different flame responses are found to be intimately related to the dynamics of the internal recirculation region, which response strongly differs depending upon the injector used to stabilize the flame.