Acoustic near-field characteristics of a conical, premixed flame

The occurrence of self-excited pressure oscillations routinely plagues the development of combustion systems. These oscillations are often driven by interactions between the flame and acoustic perturbations. This study was performed to characterize the structure of the acoustic field in the near field of the flame and the manner in which it is influenced by oscillation frequency, combustor geometry, flame length and temperature ratio. The results of these calculations indicate that the acoustic velocity has primarily one- and two-dimensional features near the flame tip and base, respectively. The magnitude of the radial velocity components increases with temperature ratio across the flame, while their axial extent increases with frequency. However, the acoustic pressure has primarily one-dimensional characteristics. They also show that the acoustic field structure exhibits only moderate dependencies upon area expansion and flame temperature ratio for values typical of practical systems. Finally, they show that the local characteristics of the acoustic field, as well as the overall plane-wave reflection coefficient, exhibit a decreasing dependence upon the flame length as the area expansion ratio increases. (C) 2003 Acoustical Society of America.