On-line adaptive optimal combustor control

Abstract

A combustor control strategy that optimizes the trade-off between increasing volumetric heat release and decreasing pressure fluctuations in a laboratory-scale combustor is described. The strategy uses actuation and sensing techniques that simultaneously control and measure volumetric heat release and pressure fluctuations to minimize a cost function while the combustor operates. The cost function is a weighted combination of mean volumetric heat release and RMS pressure fluctuation level. The combustor is maintained at the optimum operating condition when the combustor is subject to unknown inlet condition changes through continuous searching for the best actuator input combinations. The adaptiveness of the strategy has been experimentally tested with unknown inlet condition changes such as flow disturbances, changes in equivalence ratio, and changes in inlet velocity, and results show that the control strategy can re-minimize the cost function within four minutes for large and small inlet condition changes.