Non-adiabatic modulation of premixed-flame thermoacoustic frequencies in slender tubes

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of the influence of heat losses on the onset of thermoacoustic instabilities in methane-air premixed flames propagating in a horizontal tube of small diameter, $D = 10$ mm. Flames are ignited at the open end of the tube and propagate towards the closed end undergoing strong oscillations of different features due to the interaction with acoustic waves. Different regimes are reproduced in these experiments, namely the well-known primary and secondary thermoacoustic instabilities, which are strongly dependent on mixture equivalence ratio, fuel properties and geometric constraints of the combustion chamber. The frequency of oscillation and its axial location are controlled through the tube length $L$ and the intensity of heat losses. Main experimental observations show that classical one-dimensional predictions of the oscillation frequency do not accurately describe the phenomena under non-adiabatic real scenarios. Besides the experimental measurements, a quasi-one-dimensional heat transfer analysis of the burnt gases downstream of the flame is provided. This study introduced the effect of heat losses at the walls of the tube on the interplay between the acoustic field and the reaction sheet. As a result, this analysis provides an improved description of the interaction and accurately predicts the excited flame-oscillation harmonics through the eigenvalues of the non-adiabatic acoustics model. Unlike the original one-dimensional adiabatic analysis, the comparison between the flame oscillation frequency provided by the non-adiabatic extended theory and the frequencies measured in our experiments is in great agreement in the whole range of temperatures considered. This confirms the importance of heat losses in the modulation of the instabilities and the transition between the different flame oscillation regimes.