A Study of Combustion Instability Mode in Dual Swirl Gas Turbine Combustor by PLIF and Chemiluminescence Measurement

Inchan Choi, Keeman Lee, Mrinal Juddoo and A.R. MasriABSTRACTThis paper described an experimental investigations of combustion instability mode in a lean premixed dual swirl combustor for micro-gasturbine system. When such the instability occurs, a strong coupling between pressure oscillations and unsteady heat release excites a self-sustained acoustic wave which results in a loud, annoyed sound and may also lead a structural damage to the combustion chamber. The detailed period of flame behavior and heat release in combustion instability mode have been examined with high speed OH and CH-PLIF system and CH* chemiluminescence measurement, flame tomography with operated at 10 kHz and 6 kHz each. Experiment results suggest that unstable flame behavior has a specific frequency with 200 Hz and this frequency is accords with about 1/2 sub-harmonic of combustor resonance frequency, not funda-mental frequency. This is very interesting phenomenon that have not reported yet from other previous works. Therefore, when a thermo-acoustic instability with Rayleigh criterion occurs, the fact that the period of heat release and flame behavior are different each other was proposed for the first time through this work.