A Design Tool for Improved Combustor Efficiency

"A design tool is proposed, capable of quick identification of the parameter space leading to excessive flow oscillations in gas turbine combustors and augmentors. The tool is based on proper reduction of the original 3D flow path topology to an equivalent2D/axisymmetric slice which retains the salient features of the original component. Developing this design tool requires extensive testing against available experiments, established theory and phenomenological arguments in order to identify thegeometric/acoustic parameters that render a 2D section representative of the actual internal flow path. Preliminary results in Phase I were very promising and showed that amplitudes and frequencies of the dominant oscillations in an augmentor werepredicted as functions of temperature, mass flow rate and equivalence ratio. Building on this initial success, the proposed design tool will be developed and tested in Phase II."