Short- and long-term dynamic modes of turbulent swirling premixed flame in a cuboid combustor

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of hydrogen-air turbulent swirling premixed flame in a cuboid combustor is conducted to investigate thermoacoustic instability and dynamic modes of turbulent swirling premixed flame in combustors. A detailed kinetic mechanism and temperature dependency of physical properties are considered in DNS. Two swirl number cases of 0.6 and 1.2 are investigated. Large-scale helical vortical structures are generated near the inlet of combustion chamber, and a lot of fine-scale vortices emerge downstream. Flame structure is engulfed by the vortical structures and depends largely on the swirl number. Spectral analysis of pressure oscillation on walls shows that quarter-wave mode of longitudinal acoustics has the largest energy, and that characteristic oscillations are found at higher frequencies. To investigate oscillation modes of pressure and heat release rate fields, dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is applied to DNS results. It is shown that there are differences between dominant frequencies in spectral analysis of time-series pressure data at one point of walls and DMD of time-series pressure field data. DMD of pressure field reveals that the quarter-wave mode in longitudinal acoustics has the largest energy for the case of S = 0.6. Furthermore, it is clarified that the transverse acoustic plane waves and pressure oscillations induced by large-scale vortical motions play important roles for the pressure oscillations in combustors. DMD of heat release rate field reveals that the DMD modes of pressure with high amplitude do not necessarily have coupling with fluctuations of heat release rate. Interactions between dynamic modes of pressure and heat release rate are also discussed. (C) 2014 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.