Annular Combustion Chamber Research Articles

Fretting Fatigue Cracking of a Center Guide Bolt Supporting the Combustion Chamber in a Heavy-duty Gas Turbine Engine

Abstract The slotted center guide bolt of the center guide feature of the lower part of the outer shell of an annular combustion chamber was found fractured in a heavy-duty gas turbine engine used for power generation, after approximately 5.500 operating hours. The incident was a one-off event and not a recurring incident. No similar events were reported from the fleet; hence the failure was not considered a field issue. The metallurgical root cause investigation that was ordered to determine the failure mechanism revealed that the incident center guide bolt failed by fretting fatigue cracking, a high cycle fatigue (HCF) phenomenon.

Combustion chamber design and reaction modeling for aero turbo-shaft engine

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to formulate a structured approach to design an annular diffusion flame combustion chamber for use in the development of a 1,400 kW range aero turbo shaft engine. The purpose is extended to perform numerical combustion modeling by solving transient Favre Averaged Navier Stokes equations using realizable two equation k-e turbulence model and Discrete Ordinate radiation model. The presumed shape β-Probability Density Function (β-PDF) is used for turbulence chemistry interaction. The experiments are conducted on the real engine to validate the combustion chamber performance. Design/methodology/approach The combustor geometry is designed using the reference area method and semi-empirical correlations. The three dimensional combustor model is made using a commercial software. The numerical modeling of the combustion process is performed by following Eulerian approach. The functional testing of combustor was conducted to evaluate the performance. Findings The results obtained by the numerical modeling provide a detailed understanding of the combustor internal flow dynamics. The transient flame structures and streamline plots are presented. The velocity profiles obtained at different locations along the combustor by numerical modeling mostly go in-line with the previously published research works. The combustor exit temperature obtained by numerical modeling and experiment are found to be within the acceptable limit. These results form the basis of understanding the design procedure and opens-up avenues for further developments. Research limitations/implications Internal flow and combustion dynamics obtained from numerical simulation are not experimented owing to non-availability of adequate research facilities. Practical implications This study contributes toward the understanding of basic procedures and firsthand experience in the design aspects of combustors for aero-engine applications. This work also highlights one of the efficient, faster and economical aero gas turbine annular diffusion flame combustion chamber design and development. Originality/value The main novelty in this work is the incorporation of scoops in the dilution zone of the numerical model of combustion chamber to augment the effectiveness of cooling of combustion products to obtain the desired combustor exit temperature. The use of polyhedral cells for computational domain discretization in combustion modeling for aero engine application helps in achieving faster convergence and reliable predictions. The methodology and procedures presented in this work provide a basic understanding of the design aspects to the beginners working in the gas turbine combustors particularly meant for turbo shaft engines applications.

Refining the workflow of combustion chamber with toroidal recirculation mixing zone

The object of the study is a straight-flow annular combustion chamber (CC) with toroidal recirculation-mixing zone which has significant reserves of minimization in size. The workflow of the CC has a number of problems, which arise due to the lack of experimental and calculated data. The aim of the study is to refine the design of the CC with toroidal recirculation-mixing to obtain the necessary workflow parameters. The first step of maturation involved the organization of swirl structure at primary zone. On the second step there were conducted the refining of the flame shape in primary combustion zone. The third step was devoted to the formation of the necessary temperature field at the outlet of the CC. As a result, an acceptable design of the combustion chamber was obtained.

Large Eddy Simulation of Light-Round in an Annular Combustor With Liquid Spray Injection and Comparison With Experiments

The light-round is defined as the process by which the flame initiated by an ignition spark propagates from burner to burner in an annular combustor, eventually leading to a stable combustion. Combining experiments and numerical simulation, it was recently demonstrated that under perfectly premixed conditions, this process could be suitably described by large eddy simulation (LES) using massively parallel computations. The present investigation aims at developing light-round simulations in a configuration that is closer to that found in aero-engines by considering liquid n-heptane injection. The LES of the ignition sequence of a laboratory scale annular combustion chamber comprising sixteen swirled spray injectors is carried out with a monodisperse Eulerian approach for the description of the liquid phase. The objective is to assess this modeling approach of the two-phase reactive flow during the ignition process. The simulation results are compared in terms of flame structure and light-round duration to the corresponding experimental images of the flame front recorded by a high-speed intensified charge-coupled device camera and to the corresponding experimental delays. The dynamics of the flow is also analyzed to identify and characterize mechanisms controlling flame propagation during the light-round process.

Stability of the cylindrical flame front in an annular combustion chamber

Using small perturbations, within the framework of phenomenological theory of mixture combustion we study stability of the cylindrical front of deflagration combustion in an annular combustion chamber. The flame front is described as a discontinuity of gasdynamic parameters. It is discovered that the flame front is unstable for some types of small perturbations of the mainstream flow of the fuel mixture and the flame front. The mechanics of instability is examined using both numerical and analytical methods. The cases are presented of evolution of the instabilities rotating in the annular channel.

Geometry optimization of a commercial annular RQL combustor of a micro gas turbine for use with natural gas and vegetal oils

A new annular RQL combustion chamber of an 80 kWel Elliott TA80R micro gas turbine was designed and validated by means of CFD simulations of natural gas combustion on modified geometries to overcome known failures at low running hours (around 2500 hrs) caused by overheating. This work provides the results of the design optimization on some geometrical parameters for fuel injection, air-fuel mixing and mixture combustion. Moreover, the new design considered simplified manufacturability and flow optimization to reduce emission while maintaining similar temperatures and efficiencies. The new combustor can easily be built with affordable overall gross costs € guaranteeing similar TIT with respect to the original geometry and with a considerable reduction of NOx emission.

Numerical Investigation of the Stochastic Behavior of Light-Round in Annular Non-Premixed Combustors

ABSTRACTThe ignition behavior of a non-premixed multiple-burner annular combustion chamber was investigated numerically, focusing on the stochasticity and average speed of the light-round mechanism ensuring flame propagation from burner to burner that have been observed experimentally. During the propagation sequence, the flame expansion process is tracked by a previously developed stochastic low-order ignition model adapted to full combustor ignition. A stochastic model based on the probability that a flame fragment coming from an ignited burner leads to successful ignition of the next un-ignited one is developed in order to explain and quantify the global ignition behavior of the combustor. The stochastic behavior of the rig, highlighted through the experimentally observed variability of the burner-to-burner propagation times during the ignition sequence, was clarified and quantified. The lean light-round ignition limiting conditions and the mean light-round speed measured experimentally are explained and reasonably accurately predicted, demonstrating the validity of the use of the probabilistic model together with the low-order ignition model for the combustor considered. The results presented in this paper can be used to predict the ignition envelope of annular gas turbines combustors at the design stage.

Modeling of natural acoustic frequencies of a gas-turbine plant combustion chamber

The paper presents results of determination of natural acoustic frequencies of a gas-turbine plant annular combustion chamber model using 3D-simulation. At the beginning, a calculation procedure for determining natural acoustic frequencies of the gas-turbine plant combustion chamber was worked out. The effect of spatial inhomogeneity of the flow parameters (fluid composition, pressure, temperature) arising in combustion and some geometrical parameters (cooling holes of the flame tube walls) on the calculation results is studied. It is found that the change of the fluid composition in combustion affects the acoustic velocity not more than 5%; therefore, the air with a volume variable temperature can be taken as a working fluid in the calculation of natural acoustic frequencies. It is also shown that the cooling holes of the flame tube walls with diameter less than 2 mm can be neglected in the determination of the acoustic modes in the frequency range of up to 1000 Hz. This reduces the number of the grid-model elements by a factor of six in comparison with a model that considers all of the holes. Furthermore, a method of export of spatial inhomogeneity of the flow parameters from a CFD solver sector model to the annular combustion chamber model in a modal solver is presented. As a result of the obtained model calculation, acoustic modes of the combustion chamber in the frequency range of up to 1000 Hz are determined. For a standard engine condition, a potentially dangerous acoustic mode with a frequency close to the ripple frequency of the precessing vortex core, which is formed behind the burner device of this combustion chamber, is detected.

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Spark Ignition of Linearly Arranged Non-Premixed Swirling Burners

ABSTRACTThe ignition characteristics of a non-premixed multiple-burner linear combustion chamber was investigated experimentally and numerically, focusing on the determination of the mechanisms driving flame propagation from burner to burner. For different inter-burner spacings, overall equivalence ratios and bulk velocities, measurements of the velocity field and the mixture fraction distribution have been performed, respectively, with laser doppler anemometry and planar laser-induced fluorescence of acetone in the un-ignited flow. It was shown that in every individual burner, gas mixes with air within a central recirculation zone (CRZ) where the mixture is flammable except in the axial central rich gas jet and the annular air jet. Flammable mixture from the CRZ is extracted by the annular jet and this results in the existence of bridges of positive flammability factor in the inter-burner region. These bridges allow flame fragments to travel from the CRZ of the ignited burner to the CRZ of the adjacent unignited one, leading to burner-to-burner flame propagation. The ignition probability that sparking within a burner results in ignition of the adjacent one was obtained by performing many separate ignition trials with a laser spark. Ignition probability contours were also computed using a previously developed stochastic low-order ignition model and a large eddy simulation (LES) time-averaged solution of the cold flow. The quantification of the probability a flame kernel leads to burner ignition explained the differences existing between experimental results and the model. The results presented in this article extend our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the global ignition behavior of non-premixed annular combustion chambers.

Experimental investigation on spark ignition of annular premixed combustors

The ignition behaviour of a multiple-burner annular combustion chamber consisting of 12 or 18 bluff-body premixed methane-air swirl burners was investigated experimentally. The study focusses on the mechanism of lightround, namely the burner-to-burner flame propagation. Side visualization of the spreading flame by 5 kHz OH* chemiluminescence showed that propagation from burner to burner did not follow a purely azimuthal direction, but a sawtooth pattern with downstream and sideways motion from one burner to the following, bringing flame to the downstream part of the recirculation zone of the adjacent burner before being convected upstream leading to full burner ignition. This pattern was more pronounced when the burners where fitted with swirlers. Top visualization and image processing were used to quantify the speed of lightround as a function of inter-burner spacing, bulk velocity, equivalence ratio, and swirling feature. It was found that flame spread from burner to burner following two balanced modes of propagation. These are turbulent flame propagation combined with volumetric expansion in the inter-burner region and convection within the next un-ignited burner. The results presented in this paper bring new insights into the ignition of realistic gas turbines.

Acoustic Damper Placement and Tuning for Annular Combustors: An Adjoint-Based Optimization Study

Thermoacoustic instabilities pose a major threat to modern gas turbines. The use of acoustic dampers, like Helmholtz resonators, has proven useful for the mitigation of such instabilities. However, assessing the effect of acoustic dampers on thermoacoustic modes in annular combustion chambers remains an intricate task. This results from the implicit nature of the thermoacoustic Helmholtz equation associated with the high number of possible parameter values for the positioning of the dampers and their impedance design. In the present work, the principal challenges of the effective placement and the design of the impedance of acoustic dampers in annular chambers are discussed. This includes the choice of an appropriate objective function for the optimization, the combinatorial challenges when dealing with different possible damper arrangements, and the numerical complexities when using the thermoacoustic Helmholtz equation to approach this issue. As a key aspect, the paper proposes a new adjoint-based approach to tackle these problems. The new algorithm establishes algebraic models that predict the effect of acoustic dampers on the growth rates of the thermoacoustic modes. The theory is exemplified on the basis of a generic annular combustor model with 12 burners.

Failure Detection in an Annular Combustion Chamber with Experimental and Numerical Methods

A recent webinar entitled ‘What to consider when making the buying decision about a heat transfer fluid (HTF) for your system’, hosted by Process Heating, discussed the costs associated with the management of HTFs over and mentioned how HTFs could be protected through fluid and system preventative maintenance, which is more commonly referred to as routine sampling and chemical analysis. However, the presentation did not make it clear that sampling and chemical analysis needs to be conducted on a regular basis for each and every HTF. Indeed, there are common misconceptions / myths about the sampling of HTFs and such misunderstandings need to be avoided. The current article was written to address some commonly held misconceptions with the intention of busting the myths behind them. Herein, ten common myths are presented in an attempt to bust these myths.

Traveling circumferential unstable wave of cylindrical flame front

The researches of stability of cylindrical front of deflagration combustion in an annular combustion chamber were made using phenomenological model. The flame front is described as discontinuity of gasdynamic parameters. It is considered that the combustion products are under chemical equilibrium. The combustible mixture and the combustion products are ideal gases. The velocity of deflagration combustion is determined using the Chapman-Jouget theory. It depends on the temperature of combustible mixture only. It is found that the combustible flame front is unstable for several types of small disturbances in the system Mechanics of instabilities are examined using both the numeric and analytical methods. The cases of evolution of the unstable waves rotating in circular channel are presented.

ONERA test Facilities for Combustion in Aero Gas Turbine Engines, and Associated Optical Diagnostics

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the ONERA test facilities devoted to the study of combustion in gas turbine engines. The objectives of the experimental studies performed with these test rigs are very ambitious and extend from building databases for the validation of codes and models used in numerical simulation to applied research for evaluating the performance of advanced aero injection systems in mono-sector, multi-sector or full annular combustion chambers. For more than ten years, aside from standard measurements (i.e., pressure, temperature, mass flowrates, gas analysis sampling), optical diagnostics have been widely associated with the test campaigns carried out in these rigs. Many optical methods are now very commonly used to measure for instance flow velocity fields, size and velocity of droplets, and the location of combustion zones. Other methods that are more difficult to implement, or still under development, are being increasingly used or proposed for measuring physical or chemical parameters, such as temperature, size of soot particles or concentration of combustion products. Examples of the results obtained with the ONERA test facilities and optical diagnostics are given, in order to illustrate the studies presented in this paper.

Design and analysis of annular combustion chamber of a low bypass turbofan engine in a jet trainer aircraft

The design of an annular combustion chamber in a gas turbine engine is the backbone of this paper. It is specifically designed for a low bypass turbofan engine in a jet trainer aircraft. The combustion chamber is positioned in between the compressor and turbine. It has to be designed based on the constant pressure, enthalpy addition process. The present methodology deals with the computation of the initial design parameters from benchmarking of real-time industry standards and arriving at optimized values. It is then studied for feasibility and finalized. Then the various dimensions of the combustor are calculated based on different empirical formulas. The air mass flow is then distributed across the zones of the combustor. The cooling requirement is met using the cooling holes. Finally the variations of parameters at different points are calculated. The whole combustion chamber is modeled using Siemens NX 8.0, a modeling software and presented. The model is then analyzed using various parameters at various stages and levels to determine the optimized design. The aerodynamic flow characteristics is simulated numerically by means of ANSYS 14.5 software suite. The air-fuel mixture, combustion-turbulence, thermal and cooling analysis is carried out. The analysis is performed at various scenarios and compared. The results are then presented in image outputs and graphs.

Different Flame Patterns Linked With Swirling Injector Interactions in an Annular Combustor

Experiments in cold and reactive conditions carried out in linear arrays of injectors indicate that the flows established by neighboring injectors exhibit alternating patterns if the distance between two injectors is too small (see, for example, ASME-GT2013-94280, GT2014-25094, and GT2015-42509). This issue is investigated in this article by making use of a recently developed annular combustion chamber (ACC). This device designated as MICCA is equipped with multiple swirling injectors and its side walls are made of quartz providing full optical access to the flame region, thus allowing detailed studies of the combustion region structure and dynamics. Experiments reported in this article rely on direct observations of the flame region through light emission imaging using two standard cameras and an intensified high-speed CMOS camera. The data gathered indicate that interactions between successive injectors give rise to patterns of flames which exhibit an alternate geometry where one flame has a relatively low expansion angle while the next spreads sideways. This pattern is then repeated with a period which corresponds to twice the injector spacing. Such arrangements arise when the angle of the cup used as the end-piece of each injector exceeds a critical value. The effects of mass flow rate, equivalence ratio, and injector offset are also investigated. It is shown that the angle which defines the cup opening is the main control parameter. It is also found that when this angle exceeds a certain value and when the laminar burning velocity is fast enough, the flame pattern switches in an unsteady manner between two possible configurations. It is shown that these alternating flame patterns lead to alternating heat release rate distributions and inhomogeneous heat transfer to the chamber walls featuring a helicoidal pattern. Conditions leading to alternating flame patterns are finally discussed by making use of a recent flow regime diagram.

Joint effect of input asymmetrical velocity profile and initial turbulence intensity on hydraulics of a separated diffuser of GTE combustion chamber

This paper presents the regularities of effect of the input asymmetry of the velocity profile on the flow structure in a separated diffuser of the GTE annular combustion chamber. These regularities allow predicting the integral value of hydraulic resistance. We experimentally identified a kind of dependence between the hydraulic losses and Reynolds number in the case of asymmetric velocity profile in a prediffuser assessing the growth of pressure losses. Some updated dependencies are proposed that take into account the joint effect of the input parameters of the working fluid on the integral characteristics of its effectiveness.

Sound emission of a turbine stage due to an azimuthally periodic mean temperature

It is shown in a simulation that the tonal sound emission of a high-pressure turbine stage may increase considerably when the mean temperature of the inflow is spatially not uniform. The tonal sound power emitted in the downstream direction is increased by 5.9 dB at the blade passing frequency f b and by 11.7 dB at [Formula: see text]. The mean total temperature of the incoming flow is assumed to vary periodically in the azimuthal direction with a temperature amplitude of ±9% as a result of 14 discrete burners inside the annular combustion chamber. The temperature also varies radially with minima at the inner and outer walls of the annular channel. The turbine stage consists of a stator with 70 vanes and a rotor with 73 blades, while the temperature field in the simulation has 14 periods in the circumference.

CFD Simulation of Turbulent Flows in Proto X-3 Bioenergy Micro Gas Turbine Combustor using STD k-ε and RNG k-ε Model for Green Building Application

This paper presents a numerical analysis of gas flow in the annular combustion chamber of a Proto X-3 Bioenergy micro gas turbine for green building applications. The computational fluids dynamics (CFD) simulation was conducted in two dimensions, turbulent flow and gas phase combustion, with the goal of comparing the effects of different models in real conditions. Two different turbulence models, standard (STD) k-e and renormalization group (RNG) k-e, were applied for simulations. The fuel used was biogas produced from animal waste. Fuel consumption was assumed to be 100 kJ/s for simulations. The results of the simulations were analyzed and compared for reference. The temperature and the mass fraction of CH4, H2, O2, and CO2 distributions gave almost the same results for both models; therefore, both models (STD k-e and RNG k-e) could be used to represent the combustion process phenomenon without many significant differences.

CFD simulation in annular combustion chamber of proto X-3 bioenergy micro gas turbine

CFD simulation in annular combustion chamber of proto X-3 bioenergy micro gas turbine