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Theoretical Formulation for the Investigation of Acoustic and Entropy-Driven Combustion Instabilities in Gas Turbine Engines

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Combustion for Power Generation and Transportation

Abstract

In gas turbine combustors, the unsteady flame is a source of acoustic and entropy waves, leading to combustion noise. When these fluctuations couple with the flame and establish a positive feedback mechanism, they grow in amplitude resulting in combustion instability. Combustion instability can be driven either by the acoustic waves or acceleration of entropy waves. Entropy-driven instability is one of the dominant cause of low frequency combustion instability in industrial gas turbines, where the flow exiting the combustor is accelerated by the turbine nozzle guide vanes. This chapter presents the theoretical framework to model the generation, convection, acceleration and reflection of acoustic and entropy waves in gas turbine combustors with variable area geometry. We also discuss in detail the procedure to solve the equations and present a comparison between acoustic-driven instability and entropy-driven instability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Prof. T. Poinsot, Research Director, Institut de Mecanique des Fluides de Toulouse, CNRS, France for his insightful suggestions and providing recent references, which formed the foundation of the reported work. The first and third authors would like to thank Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur for providing the financial support through the Institute Post-Doctoral and SURGE Fellowships respectively, which made this work possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India

    Balasubramanian Singaravelu & Sathesh Mariappan

  2. Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721302, India

    Avijit Saha

Authors
  1. Balasubramanian Singaravelu
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  2. Sathesh Mariappan
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  3. Avijit Saha
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Balasubramanian Singaravelu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur , Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Avinash Kumar Agarwal

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur , Kanpur, Jharkhand, India

    Santanu De

  3. Eminent Scientist, Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing, Mohali, Punjab, India

    Ashok Pandey

  4. Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur , Kanpur, Jharkhand, India

    Akhilendra Pratap Singh

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Singaravelu, B., Mariappan, S., Saha, A. (2017). Theoretical Formulation for the Investigation of Acoustic and Entropy-Driven Combustion Instabilities in Gas Turbine Engines. In: Agarwal, A., De, S., Pandey, A., Singh, A. (eds) Combustion for Power Generation and Transportation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3785-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3785-6_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-3784-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-3785-6

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