Stability Investigation of Combustion Chambers with LES

Our primary energy consumption is supported in 81% by the combustion of fossil energy commodities (IEA, 2010). The demand on energy will grow by about 60% in the near future (Shell, 2008). The efficiency of the combustion processes is crucial for the environment and for the use of the remaining resources. At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology the longterm project Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 606: “Non-stationary Combustion: Transport Phenomena, Chemical Reactions, Technical Systems” was founded to investigate the basics of combustion and for the implementations relevant processes coupled to combustion (Bockhorn et al., 2003; SFB 606, 2002). Modern combustion concepts comprise lean premixed (LP) combustion, which allows for the reduction of the pollutant emissions, in particular oxides of nitrogen (NOx) (Lefebvre, 1995). Lean premixed combustors are, however, prone to combustion instabilities with both low and high frequencies. These instabilities result in higher emission, acoustical load of the environment and even in structural damage of the system. A subproject in CRC 606 was dedicated to investigate low frequency instabilities in combustion systems. The main goal of this subproject was to validate an analytical model, which was developed to describe the resonant characteristics of combustion systems consisting of Helmholtz resonator type components (burner plenum, combustion chamber) (Büchner, 2001). The subproject included experimental and numerical investigations as well. The goal of the numerical part was to find a reliable tool in order to predict the damping ratio of the system. The damping ratio is a very important input of the analytical model. The combination of the numerical prediction of the damping ratio and the analytical model enables the stability investigation of a system during the design phase. In the numerical part Large Eddy Simulation (LES) was used to predict the damping ratio as previous investigations with unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation (URANS) failed to predict the damping ratio satisfactorily (Rommel, 1995). The results of LES showed a very good agreement with the experimentally measured damping ratio. The focus of this chapter is to show results of further numerical investigations, which sheds light on a very important source of self-excited combustion instabilities, and to show how can provide LES the eigenfrequencies of a system. In this chapter firstly a short description to combustion instabilities is given. After it the experimental and the numerical investigations of the resonant characteristics of the combustion systems will be shown briefly. In these investigations the system was excited