High Amplitude Combustion Instabilities in an Annular Combustor Inducing Pressure Field Deformation and Flame Blow-Off
Abstract This article reports experiments carried out in the laboratory scale annular combustor MICCA-Spray equipped with multiple swirling spray injectors. The experimental setup consists in an air plenum connected to a combustion chamber formed by two concentric cylindrical quartz tubes, allowing full optical access to the flames. A new injection system is introduced and characterized. For a wide range of operating conditions, strong combustion instabilities are observed, but the focus of this article is placed on very high amplitude combustion instabilities coupled by a standing azimuthal mode. It is found that the frequency decreases as the amplitude of the thermoacoustic oscillation grows. New results are obtained using a higher order reconstruction method for the pressure field: its shape is shown to be modified during high amplitude oscillation, leading to asymmetries of the pressure distribution in the system. Flame blow-off occurs near the pressure nodal line when a critical level of oscillation is reached. A method is proposed to reconstruct the acoustic velocity field just before blow-off occurs. Both the velocity field and the blow-off pattern are skewed. The effect of flame blow-off on the frequency of the oscillation is discussed, and it is shown that it leads to the distortion of the pressure field. A new result is also that the phase of the flame response to acoustic perturbation can vary among flames on the same side of the nodal line.