Response of lean premixed swirl tubular flame to acoustic perturbations

This study experimentally examined the response of a lean premixed methane/air swirl tubular flame to the longitudinal acoustic perturbations. Experiments were conducted by varying the acoustic frequency (f₀), acoustic power (P₀) and inlet air flow rate (Q_A) to systematically study the acoustic-excited flame dynamics, including the flame stability, flame structure, heat release rate and acoustic pressure fluctuations. The results demonstrated that the lean tubular flame was much sensitive to longitudinal perturbations below 210 Hz. Even at low power of P₀, the flame was forced to oscillate intensively when the perturbation was operated in two discontinuous frequency ranges of f₀ = 150–200 and f₀ = 50–100 Hz, while a weakened oscillation regime was observed in the middle range of f₀ = 100–150 Hz; a lower frequency (less than 50 Hz) would extinguish the flame. An increase in P₀ intensified the flame oscillation under the perturbations of 50–100 Hz, and even resulted in flame lift-off and blow off with f₀ between 150 and 200 Hz. In comparison to f₀ and P₀, the effects of air flow rate (Q_A) seemed to be weaker. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis was performed to interpret the contributions from the mean mode and fluctuating axial and circumferential modes that led to combustion instability. It was found that as the energy fraction of the axial mode exceeded 5.0%, the flame lift-off appeared in the lean swirl tubular configuration.