SECTION H

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COMBUSTION CHAMBER DEVELOPMENT

WALTER T. OLSON

H,l. Introduction. Designs for high speed combustion systems for

aircraft have had to join what nature dictates that fuel, air, and flame
must do on the one hand with demands imposed by flight and by the
engine on the other hand. Lloyd (Sec. B) has indicated the requirements
to be met and the difficulties to be surmounted. Development of com­
bustion systems to meet these requirements has been an outstanding
achievement in engineering.
As in other areas of engineering, combustor development has advanced
with the help of both direct engineering experience and collateral informa­
tion on the basic processes involved. The extensive information and
insight on subjects such as fuel atomization and vaporization, mixing,
flammability limits, ignition energy, flame stabilization, flame propaga­
tion, smoke formation, and flame quenching are important aids in the
analysis and design of high speed combustors.
Vol. II of this series, as well as Sec. B through G of this volume, have
presented background information on combustion science in general.
They also describe some of the engineering principles needed in combustor
design. This section describes the kinds of combustion system that have
been useful for gas turbines, the performance trends usually observed,
and some of the main considerations that enter the design art. The
relations of certain combustion principles to the applied problems are
stressed. It is freely admitted that the result is not a design handbook.
Rather, this and the preceding sections give the reader most of the back­
ground in the field of turbojet combustion. The references cited, while
not a complete bibliography, provide a useful introduction into the
scientific literature on the subject.

H,2. Historical Development. Historically, the successful appli­

cation of combustion to the aircraft gas turbine was a prerequisite that
both the British and German investigators had to meet in their inde­
pendent and nearly concurrent development of workable turbojet engines.
The basic technique that has evolved has already been sketched in Sec. B
in order to permit the subsequent discussions of the appropriate processes.
This article attempts to describe some particular combustor designs that