A Systematic Investigation of Bluff-Body Combustion Instability

"The industrial gas turbine and military engine manufacturers have astrong need for accurate design tools that are capable of predictingaeroengine combustion, as well as predicting the sensitivity of the flowto a wide range of engine design parameters including actuator power andfuel-injector location. In response to this need, AeroSoft, incooperation with Virginia Tech, propose to experimentally test adynamically scaled combustor where the flame is stabilized behind abluff-body combined with a dump. Parametric studies from steady,unsteady and open-loop control operations will be used to measure thefidelity of computational simulations. An additive semi-implicitRunge-Kutta scheme and a two-parameter coupling mechanism will beimplemented to compute the bluff-body instability problem. Thesensitivity-equation method will be incorporated into a time-accurateflow solver to provide truly unsteady sensitivities to various actuatorparameters. The combined experimental/computational work provides anopportunity to further the development of distributed-parameter controlin combustor applications."