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Combustion and Flame

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/combustflame

Mitigating instability by actuating the swirler in a combustor✩

R. Gopakumar a, Sudeepta Mondal a, Reetam Paul a, Mahesh S. a, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri a,b,∗
a
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India
b
National Center for Combustion Research and Development, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Thermoacoustic instability in a lean premixed combustor is a major impediment towards reliable opera-
Received 7 October 2015 tion of gas turbine engines for both aerospace and land based applications. In this communication, we in-
Revised 19 December 2015
vestigate the following concept: in a laboratory combustor, could the otherwise static swirler be actuated
Accepted 20 December 2015
to a rotary motion, such that the higher intensity turbulence and higher swirl number generated in the
Available online xxx
flame stabilization region might alter the flame position, structure and thereby assist in mitigating ther-
Keywords: moacoustic instabilities? Results obtained using microphone and high speed imaging, show prominent
Thermoacoustic instability reductions in the amplitudes of the first mode of the thermoacoustically unstable flame, with increased
Turbulent premixed flames rotation rate of the swirler.
Swirl flows © 2015 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Instability control

1. Introduction possible to reduce instabilities by changing the radial swirler blade

Enhanced periodic pressure oscillations resulting from a pos-
itive feedback between the unsteady heat release rate and the
acoustic pressure fluctuations in a confined combustion chamber
are referred to as thermoacoustic instability. This is an undesirable
phenomenon that has been a matter of prime consideration among
combustion researchers over decades [1–4]. Intense research has
been carried out in the recent years in instability mitigation by us-
ing open loop [5–7] and closed loop [8] active control techniques.
Several such techniques are documented in the reviews by Candel
[9], McManus et al. [10] and Culick [11]. Some researchers have
also considered passive control strategies using acoustic dampers
like Helmholtz resonators, perforated liners, quarter and half-wave
tubes and baffles [2,12–14]; but the addition of such components
might affect the combustor performance, weight and heat loads
[15,16].
Various methods of controlling thermoacoustic instabilities in
swirl stabilized combustors have been studied. Using Large Eddy
Simulations, Stone and Menon [17] showed that increasing swirl
number at the inlet boundary could lead to mitigation of com-
bustion instability. While Durox et al. [18] have shown that it is
✩
Patent pending.
∗
Corresponding author at: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute
of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
E-mail address: schaudhuri@aero.iisc.ernet.in, swetaprovo@gmail.com
(S. Chaudhuri).
angles, Straub and Richards [19] have studied how the magnitude
of pressure oscillations are affected by varying the axial swirl vane
location inside the combustor. Extensive numerical and experimen-
tal works on: swirl fluctuations and their effect on flame dynam-
ics, could be found in literature [17,20–25]. In this experimental
work, we propose a rotating swirler configuration which utilizes
both increased turbulence intensity and increased swirl number,
to mitigate thermoacoustic instabilities. The underlying philosophy
of the approach is in part inspired by the seminal work of Craw-
ley and De Luis [26] which focused on actuation of solid beams
by piezoelectric materials thereby heralding the onset of “smart
structures”. In our approach, a premixed flame would be stabilized
at the downstream of high speed, rotating swirler blades, where
the turbulence intensity could be varied and controlled. Increasing
swirler rotation rate would lead to controlled increase of turbu-
lent flame speed such that the flame stabilization location could be
changed on average, accompanied by change in the flame structure
[27]. It is known that flame shape and location could be primary
drivers that determine whether a given flame-combustor configu-
ration would be thermoacoustically unstable or not, see for exam-
ple [18,28]. Therefore, changing the flame location by controlling
the swirler rotational frequency could be used as a thermoacous-
tic control strategy in a swirl stabilized flame configuration. While
tremendous progress has been made on understanding flame dy-
namics with static swirlers [1,29–32], this is the first effort to our
knowledge, which focus on the effect of an actuated swirler on
thermoacoustics in an otherwise thermoacoustically unstable com-
bustor.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2015.12.019
0010-2180/© 2015 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: R. Gopakumar et al., Mitigating instability by actuating the swirler in a combustor, Combustion and Flame
(2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2015.12.019
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2 R. Gopakumar et al. / Combustion and Flame 000 (2016) 1–3

Fig. 2. Variation of Mean Peak Amplitude of Modes 1–3 as a function of swirler ro-
Fig. 1. Ensemble averaged acoustic response obtained by microphone at four differ- tation rate. Inset table shows the corresponding frequencies of the different modes.
ent swirler rotation rates.

2. Experimental setup

In the model combustor, (shown in Fig. A1 (a–c) in Supplemen-

tary material) a 30o , axial, straight-blade swirler mounted on a
shaft-coupling-motor assembly has been used as a mechanism for
flame stabilization. The experimental setup involving a cylindrical
quartz test section (diameter of 46 mm and length 60 mm), sur-
rounds the premixed flame of 99% pure methane and air mixture
at an equivalence ratio of 0.71. The quartz test section is followed
by a 2 m long, 44 mm diameter, aluminum tube.

3. Results and discussions

Figure 1 shows the ensemble averaged spectra of sound pres-

sure levels (reference level being 20 μPa) obtained from the at-
tenuated microphone recordings. The averaging was performed at
discrete frequencies over nine different runs for each of 0, 1000,
1400 and 1800 rpms. It can be seen in Fig. 1, that for the static
swirler configuration there is a strong peak at 75 Hz which nearly
corresponds to the L/4 mode of the combustor. It is found that as Fig. 3. Chemiluminescence energy spectra at different swirler rotation rates. Inset
the rotational speed of the swirler increases from 0 rpm to 1000, shows same data with x axis in log scale.
1400 and 1800 rpms, there is a clear and progressive reduction in
the amplitude of this first longitudinal mode referred to as Mode 1
higher frequency modes is also observed. As mentioned in the
in Fig. 1. This is also accompanied by a small frequency shift of the
introduction, the overall instability mitigation could be attributed
same. In addition, with rotation, there is a progressive but small in-
to the change in flame stabilization location under the impact of
crease in intensity of the Modes 2 and 3 at around 212 and 360 Hz.
the enhanced turbulence flame speed. Radial profiles of mean and
The mitigation of Mode 1 and slight enhancement of the Modes 2
r.m.s. of velocity could be found in Supplementary material Fig.
and 3 are quantified in Fig. 2 which plots the averaged peak am-
A2 (a and b).
plitude of the Modes 1, 2 and 3 as function of swirler rotation
rate. The inset table shows the frequencies corresponding to the
individual modes at different rpms. Figure 2 shows that between 0 4. Conclusions
and 1800 rpm, the average amplitude of Mode 1 reduces by 22 dB
SPL whereas that of Modes 2 and 3 increases by 8.5 and 6.2 dB SPL, This work is an experimental demonstration of the concept:
respectively. At 1400 rpm rotational speed, all the acoustic peaks Mitigating Instability by Actuating the Swirler in a Combustor.
are nearly of the same amplitude, with a reduction of 18.7 dB SPL With an increase in rotational speed of the swirler, the turbulence
for the first mode w.r.t that at 0 rpm. intensity and swirl number increases. This changes the flame po-
Figure 3 shows the energy spectrum of the unfiltered line-of- sition, shape and structure. It has been observed from both the
sight integrated chemiluminescence signal at different rpms. The acoustic and high speed chemiluminescence imaging signals, that
entire flame region contained within the quartz cylinder has been with an increase in rotational frequency, there is a prominent mit-
taken as the interrogation zone for processing the high speed igation of the first longitudinal mode of self-excited thermoacous-
videos. The prominent modes of the chemiluminescence energy tic instability. The results presented in this communication, possi-
spectrum follow similar trend as that shown by the microphone bly serve as the first proof of concept of using a rotating swirler
recordings with the amplitude of the 75 Hz frequency decreas- to mitigate thermoacoustic instability in a combustor, in place of
ing with increasing rotational speed. Small amplification of the conventionally used static swirlers.

Please cite this article as: R. Gopakumar et al., Mitigating instability by actuating the swirler in a combustor, Combustion and Flame
(2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2015.12.019
JID: CNF
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R. Gopakumar et al. / Combustion and Flame 000 (2016) 1–3
Acknowledgments
The support of Department of Science and Technology spon-
sored, National Center for Combustion Research and Development
is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also sincerely acknowl-
edge the support of Prof. Saptarshi Basu for sharing some of
the equipment used in the experiments. Insightful advice from
anonymous reviewers is also gratefully acknowledged.
Supplementary Materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.combustflame.2015.12.
019.
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