Longitudinal and azimuthal thermo-acoustic instabilities in an industrial gas turbine combustor operating at elevated pressure
File(s)
Author(s)
Fredrich, Daniel
Jones, William P
Marquis, Andrew J
Bulat, Ghenadie
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This work numerically investigates longitudinal and azimuthal thermo-acoustic instabilities in the swirl-stabilised can-type industrial SGT-100 gas turbine combustor operated at elevated pressures of 3 and 6 bar. Previous experiments have shown that the combustor is susceptible to self-excited flame oscillations sustained by a thermo-acoustic feedback loop at specific operating conditions. In order to gain a better understanding of this feedback loop, a fully compressible large eddy simulation method is applied. The unknown sub-grid scale turbulence-chemistry interactions are modelled via a transported probability density function approach solved by the Eulerian stochastic fields method. First, the reaction zones and global flame topology at both operating pressures are analysed and compared to experimental images providing good qualitative agreement. Radial profiles of time-averaged and root-mean-square quantities furthermore demonstrate good quantitative agreement with the available measurement data. The applied simulation approach is capable of successfully reproducing self-excited thermo-acoustic instabilities in the longitudinal direction. The fundamental frequency of the predicted limit-cycle oscillation matches the experimentally measured frequency with high accuracy. Similar to the experimental observations, the fluctuation amplitudes of the pressure and global heat release rate increase significantly upon increasing the mean operating pressure from 3 to 6 bar. In addition to the dominant longitudinal mode, a high-frequency, low-amplitude azimuthal mode is also identified at both pressures. This azimuthal mode is periodically amplified and attenuated by the superposed longitudinal mode and induces small asymmetric (around the burner circumference) fluctuations of the local fuel and total mixture mass flow rates entering the flame region.
Date Issued
2024-06
Date Acceptance
2023-11-11
Citation
International Journal of Spray and Combustion Dynamics, 2024, 16 (1-2), pp.33-47
ISSN
1756-8277
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Start Page
33
End Page
47
Journal / Book Title
International Journal of Spray and Combustion Dynamics
Volume
16
Issue
1-2
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17568277231218595
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-12-21