The local extinction and the nonlinear behaviors of a premixed methane/air flame under low-frequency acoustic excitation

The local extinction and the nonlinear behavior of a premixed methane/air flame under acoustic excitation are investigated experimentally. High-speed photography and high-speed schlieren imaging are used to investigate the oscillation characteristics of the premixed methane/air flame. The flame structure shows a periodic fluctuation when the acoustic excitation is performed to the flame. The local flame extinction can be observed during the flame evolution process. During the local flame extinction process, the flame is found to be cut into two components, then the downstream one extinguishes shortly. The Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) results suggest that the lower velocity at the separation point is one of the reasons for the flame local extinction. The flame without the acoustic excitation oscillates with a dominant frequency of 18 Hz, which is shown by the schlieren images to be related to the evolution of the hot gas around the flame driven by the buoyant force. When the acoustic excitation frequency is 100 Hz, the structure of the hot gas is destroyed, meanwhile the amplitude of the nature frequency decreases significantly. The hot gas structure appears regularly with the increasing excitation frequency. As a result, the amplitude of the nature frequency also increases gradually. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) analysis shows that the dominant frequency of the flame without the acoustic excitation is mainly caused by the evolution of the production zone of the flame and the fluctuation of the flame tip. The evolution of the production zone is driven by the buoyant force, which indicates that the result from POD method is consistent with the conclusion obtained from the high-speed schlieren images. Two dominant modes are obtained when the excitation frequencies are 100 and 200 Hz. The two modes are mainly caused by the process of the local flame extinction and the increasing flame length.