Fluid-Structure Interaction in Combustion System of a Gas Turbine—Effect of Liner Vibrations

Prediction of mutual interaction between flow, combustion, acoustic, and vibration phenomena occurring in a combustion chamber is crucial for the reliable operation of any combustion device. In this paper, this is studied with application to the combustion chamber of a gas turbine. Very dangerous for the integrity of a gas turbine structure can be the coupling between unsteady heat release by the flame, acoustic wave propagation, and liner vibrations. This can lead to a closed-loop feedback system resulting in mechanical failure of the combustor liner due to fatigue and fatal damage to the turbine. Experimental and numerical investigations of the process are performed on a pressurized laboratory-scale combustor. To take into account interaction between reacting flow, acoustics, and vibrations of a liner, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural dynamics (CSD) calculations are combined into one calculation process using a partitioning technique. Computed pressure fluctuations inside the combustion chamber and associated liner vibrations are validated with experiments performed at the state-of-the-art pressurized combustion setup. Three liner structures with different thicknesses are studied. The numerical results agree well with the experimental data. The research shows that the combustion instabilities can be amplified by vibrating walls. The modeling approach discussed in this paper allows to decrease the risk of the gas turbine failure by prediction, for given operating conditions, of the hazardous frequency at which the thermoacoustic instabilities appear.