Self-Sustained Instabilities in an Annular Combustor Coupled by Azimuthal and Longitudinal Acoustic Modes

Annular combustors may give rise to various types of combustion instabilities. Some of the resulting oscillations coupled by transverse acoustic modes are commonly observed in practice and their suppression or reduction is an important issue which needs to be considered. The present study is carried out in a system comprising an annular plenum feeding 16 swirling injectors confined by two cylindrical quartz tubes opened to the atmosphere. Calculations based on a Helmholtz solver provide a suitable estimate of frequencies observed experimentally and reveal the modal structure corresponding to the longitudinal and transverse oscillations. High speed images obtained under reactive conditions are then processed to extract the structure of heat release rate perturbations and match this structure with that of the coupling acoustic mode. It is found that the transverse instability is coupled by a first azimuthal mode which is characterized by a time varying spin ratio. This index gives the respective levels of rotating components in the azimuthal mode. Another instability arising at a lower frequency is coupled by a longitudinal acoustic mode giving rise to high-amplitude oscillations in heat release rate in which most of the flames (but not all) are synchronized and in phase with the pressure perturbation.