Effects of Fuel Spray Modeling on Combustion Instability Predictions in a Single-Element Lean Direct Injection (LDI) Gas Turbine Combustor

Abstract

Simulations of a model configuration of a lean direct injection (LDI) gas turbine combustor were performed to assess the effects of fuel spray modeling in predicting combustion instability. Concurrently, experimental data were obtained at the same conditions in a test combustor with the same configuration for comparison. To improve the simulation predictions, fuel spray modeling was tuned and assessed in two major steps. First, focus is put on the Weber number-adaptive hybrid model that describes the secondary atomization. Tuning the model constants over a finite range does not have a significant effect on the predictions. Second, specified fuel spray distributions are tested to replace the linear stability primary breakup model (LISA). Both uniform and log-normal distributions are used with different mean drop diameters. A better match between pressure amplitude could be achieved by specifying a spray drop distribution, but the predicted dominant modes (3L/4L and 1T) seemed to be very sensitive to the distributions applied.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA623017

Entities

People

  • Cheng Huang
  • Rohan Gejji
  • Venkateswaran Sankaran
  • William E Anderson

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Amplitude
  • Atomization
  • Chambers
  • Combustion
  • Combustors
  • Crystal Lattice Vibrations
  • Diameters
  • Equations
  • Fuel Nozzles
  • Fuel Sprays
  • Fuels
  • Gas Turbines
  • Geometry
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Normal Distribution
  • Turbines

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Technology.