Three-step approach for prediction of limit cycle pressure oscillations in combustion chambers of gas turbines

Currently, gas turbine manufacturers frequently face the problem of strong acoustic combustion driven oscillations inside combustion chambers. These combustion instabilities can cause extensive wear and sometimes even catastrophic damages to combustion hardware. This requires prevention of combustion instabilities, which, in turn, requires reliable and fast predictive tools. This work presents a three-step method to find stability margins within which gas turbines can be operated without going into self-excited pressure oscillations. As a first step, a set of unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations with the Flame Speed Closure (FSC) model implemented in the OpenFOAM® environment are performed to obtain the flame describing function of the combustor set-up. The standard FSC model is extended in this work to take into account the combined effect of strain and heat losses on the flame. As a second step, a linear three-time-lag-distributed model for a perfectly premixed swirl-stabilized flame is extended to the nonlinear regime. The factors causing changes in the model parameters when applying high-amplitude velocity perturbations are analysed. As a third step, time-domain simulations employing a low-order network model implemented in Simulink® are performed. In this work, the proposed method is applied to a laboratory test rig. The proposed method permits not only the unsteady frequencies of acoustic oscillations to be computed, but the amplitudes of such oscillations as well. Knowing the amplitudes of unstable pressure oscillations, it is possible to determine how these oscillations are harmful to the combustor equipment. The proposed method has a low cost because it does not require any license for computational fluid dynamics software.     

Altered Phase Interactions between Spontaneous Blood Pressure and Flow Fluctuations in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Nonlinear Assessment of Cerebral Autoregulation

Cerebral autoregulation is an important mechanism that involves dilatation and constriction in arterioles to maintain relatively stable cerebral blood flow in response to changes of systemic blood pressure. Traditional assessments of autoregulation focus on the changes of cerebral blood flow velocity in response to large blood pressure fluctuations induced by interventions. This approach is not feasible for patients with impaired autoregulation or cardiovascular regulation. Here we propose a newly developed technique—the multimodal pressure-flow (MMPF) analysis, which assesses autoregulation by quantifying nonlinear phase interactions between spontaneous oscillations in blood pressure and flow velocity during resting conditions. We show that cerebral autoregulation in healthy subjects can be characterized by specific phase shifts between spontaneous blood pressure and flow velocity oscillations, and the phase shifts are significantly reduced in diabetic subjects. Smaller phase shifts between oscillations in the two variables indicate more passive dependence of blood flow velocity on blood pressure, thus suggesting impaired cerebral autoregulation. Moreover, the reduction of the phase shifts in diabetes is observed not only in previously-recognized effective region of cerebral autoregulation (<0.1 Hz), but also over the higher frequency range from ∼0.1 to 0.4 Hz. These findings indicate that type 2 diabetes mellitus alters cerebral blood flow regulation over a wide frequency range and that this alteration can be reliably assessed from spontaneous oscillations in blood pressure and blood flow velocity during resting conditions. We also show that the MMPF method has better performance than traditional approaches based on Fourier transform, and is more suitable for the quantification of nonlinear phase interactions between nonstationary biological signals such as blood pressure and blood flow.     

Equation of state for solids with considering cohesive energy and anharmonic effect and its application to MgO

A simple equation of state (EOS) in wide ranges of pressure and temperature is constructed within the Mie-Grüneisen-Debye framework. Instead of the popular Birch-Murnaghan and Vinet EOS, we employ a five-parameter cold energy expression to represent the static EOS term, which can correctly produce cohesive energy without any spurious oscillations in extreme compression and expansion region. We developed a Padé approximation-based analytic Debye quasiharmonic model with high accuracy which improves the performance of EOS in low temperature region. The anharmonic effect is taken into account by using a semi-empirical approach. Its reasonability is verified by the fact that the total thermal pressure tends to the lowest-order anharmonic expansion in the literature at low temperature, and tends to ideal-gas limitation at high temperature, which is physically correct. Besides, based on this approach, the anharmonic thermal pressure can be expressed in the Grüneisen form, which is convenient for applications. The proposed EOS is used to study the thermodynamic properties of MgO including static and shock compression conditions, and the results are very satisfactory as compared with the experimental data.     

High-order shock-fitting methods for direct numerical simulation of hypersonic flow with chemical and thermal nonequilibrium

In recent years, much progress has been made in the direct numerical simulation of laminar-turbulent transition of hypersonic boundary layer flow. However, most of the efforts at the direct numerical simulation of transition previously have been focused on the idealized perfect gas flow or “cold” hypersonic flows. For practical problems in hypersonic flows, high-temperature effects of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium are important and cannot be modeled by a perfect gas model. Therefore, it is necessary to include the real gas models in the numerical simulation of hypersonic boundary layer transition in order to accurately predict flow field parameters. Currently most numerical methods for hypersonic flow with thermo-chemical nonequilibrium are based on shock-capturing approach at relatively low order of accuracy. Shock capturing schemes reduce to first-order accuracy near the shock and have been shown to produce spurious oscillations behind curved strong shocks. There is a need to develop new methods capable of simulating nonequilibrium hypersonic flow fields with uniformly high-order accuracy and avoid spurious oscillations near the shock. This paper presents a fifth-order shock-fitting method for numerical simulation of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium in hypersonic flows. The method is developed based on the state-of-the-art real gas models for thermo-chemical nonequilibrium and transport phenomena. Shock-fitting approach is used because it has the advantage of capturing the entire flow field with high-order accuracy and without any oscillations near the shock. The new method has been tested and validated for a number of test cases over a wide span of free stream conditions. The developed method is applied for the study of receptivity of free stream acoustic waves over a blunt cone for hypervelocity flow. Some preliminary results of the computations of the high order shock fitting method for the above mentioned study have also been presented.     

Statistical characteristics of pressure oscillations in a premixed combustor

This paper describes an investigation of the statistical characteristics of self-excited and noise-driven pressure oscillations in a premixed combustor. This work was motivated by observations that certain characteristics of these oscillations appear random and cannot be entirely characterized within a deterministic framework (e.g., spontaneous, noise-induced transitions of the combustor from stable to unstable operation or cycle-to-cycle variations in the oscillating pressure). In an effort to elucidate these stochastic elements, we performed an analysis of cycle-to-cycle variations in combustor pressure whose results are described in this paper. Data obtained from our combustor shows that the probability density function of the amplitude of these oscillations transitions from a Rayleigh to a Gaussian-type distribution as the combustor moves from stable to unstable operation. These data also show that the instability phase is nearly uniformly distributed; i.e., there is no phase value with maximum probability of occurrence. We also describe a theoretical analysis of the statistical features of a non-linear combustor model that is forced by random noise. Solutions of this model are presented and shown to be in agreement with measured data. The good agreement between the predictions and measured data suggest that the analysis presented in this paper provides a useful framework for interpreting many other apparently random features of combustor stability characteristics; for example, cyclic variability, “fuzziness” in stability boundaries, or noise-induced transitions.     

Equation of state for solids considering cohesive energy and anharmonic effect and its application to MgO

A simple equation of state(EOS) in wide ranges of pressure and temperature is constructed within the MieGrneisen-Debye framework.Instead of the popular Birch-Murnaghan and Vinet EOS,we employ a five-parameter cold energy expression to represent the static EOS term,which can correctly produce cohesive energy without any spurious oscillations in the extreme compression and expansion regions.We developed a Pad’e approximation-based analytic Debye quasiharmonic model with high accuracy which improves the performance of EOS in the low temperature region.The anharmonic effect is taken into account by using a semi-empirical approach.Its reasonability is verified by the fact that the total thermal pressure tends to the lowest-order anharmonic expansion in the literature at low temperature,and tends to ideal-gas limitation at high temperature,which is physically correct.Besides,based on this approach,the anharmonic thermal pressure can be expressed in the Gru¨neisen form,which is convenient for applications.The proposed EOS is used to study the thermodynamic properties of MgO including static and shock compression conditions,and the results are very satisfactory as compared with the experimental data.     

System identification and early warning detection of thermoacoustic oscillations in a turbulent combustor using its noise-induced dynamics

Despite significant research, self-excited thermoacoustic oscillations continue to hinder the development of lean-premixed gas turbines, making the early detection of such oscillations a key priority. We perform output-only system identification of a turbulent lean-premixed combustor near a Hopf bifurcation using the noise-induced dynamics generated by inherent turbulence in the fixed-point regime, prior to the Hopf point itself. We model the pressure fluctuations in the combustor with a van der Pol-type equation and its corresponding Stuart–Landau equation. We extract the drift and diffusion terms of the equivalent Fokker–Planck equation via the transitional probability density function of the pressure amplitude. We then optimize the extracted terms with the adjoint Fokker–Planck equation. Through comparisons with experimental data, we show that this approach can enable prediction of (i) the location of the Hopf point and (ii) the limit-cycle amplitude after the Hopf point. This study shows that output-only system identification can be performed on a turbulent combustor using only pre-bifurcation data, opening up new pathways to the development of early warning indicators of thermoacoustic instability in practical combustion systems.     

Imposed layer-by-layer growth by pulsed laser interval deposition

Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) has become a significant technique to study the thin film growth of novel materials. Here, one has benefited from the main advantages of PLD, the relative easy stoichiometric transfer of material from target to substrate and the almost free choice of (relatively high) background pressures. However, the applicability of PLD is still hampered, because real time in situ growth monitoring was almost not available. For example, Reflection High-Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) was limited to low background pressures only until recently. High pressure RHEED, which makes it possible to in situ monitor during deposition of oxides at the higher pressures, opened new possibilities [1]. Besides observed intensity oscillations due to layer by layer growth, enabling accurate growth rate control, it became clear that intensity relaxation observed due to the typical pulsed way of deposition leads to a wealth of information about growth parameters [2]. Here, PLD in combination with high pressure RHEED is used to study the influence of the different parameters on the growth mode, resulting in a new approach to impose layer by layer growth by interval deposition.     

Laser induced plasma spectroscopy for local equivalence ratio measurements in an oscillating combustion environment

Equivalence ratios measured with a laser induced plasma spectroscopy (LIPS, also referred as LIBS) are reported in two different setups. First, a small premixed turbulent burner is used to address fundamental issues concerning the LIPS technique. It is shown that hydrogen excitation within the created plasma is the key parameter to measure in order to retrieve correctly equivalence ratio measurements. Results compared with a spark energy classification strategy show better results with excitation classification, as variations in ratio between the different lines come not only from gaseous concentration but also from plasma’s characteristics. Using spectra from 450 to 800 nm allows the determination of two independent emission ratios to improve single shot accuracy. The developed approach is afterwards applied to phase-locked measurements of equivalence ratio in a lean premixed combustor, for which strong thermo-acoustics oscillations exist. This combustor runs with methane-air, preheated at 700 K and with a typical equivalence ratio of 0.50, for which the sound pressure levels of the oscillations are 170 dB. Measurements at the inlet of the combustor reveal strong correlations between fluctuations of the incoming stoichiometry and pressure fluctuations. It is shown that stoichiometry changes within one oscillating cycle of about 3%. Those changes are crucial for the flame dynamics as dealing with very lean mixtures.     

Review of relaxation oscillations in plasma processing discharges

Relaxation oscillations due to plasma instabilities at frequencies ranging from a few Hz to tens of kHz have been observed in various types of plasma processing discharges. Relaxation oscillations have been observed in electropositive capacitive discharges between a powered anode and a metallic chamber whose periphery is grounded through a slot with dielectric spacers. The oscillations of time-varying optical emission from the main discharge chamber show, for example, a high-frequency (\sim 40~kHz) relaxation oscillation at 13.33Pa, with an absorbed power being nearly the peripheral breakdown power, and a low-frequency ( \sim 3 Hz) oscillation, with an even higher absorbed power. The high-frequency oscillation is found to ignite plasma in the slot, but usually not in the peripheral chamber. The kilohertz oscillations are modelled using an electromagnetic model of the slot impedance, coupled to a circuit analysis of the system including the matching network. The model results are in general agreement with the experimental observations, and indicate a variety of behaviours dependent on the matching conditions. In low-pressure inductive discharges, oscillations appear in the transition between low-density capacitively driven and high-density inductively driven discharges when attaching gases such as SF₆ and Ar/SF₆ mixtures are used. Oscillations of charged particles, plasma potential, and light, at frequencies ranging from a few Hz to tens of kHz, are seen for gas pressures between 0.133 Pa and 13.33 Pa and discharge powers in a range of 75--1200 W. The region of instability increases as the plasma becomes more electronegative, and the frequency of plasma oscillation increases as the power, pressure, and gas flow rate increase. A volume-averaged (global) model of the kilohertz instability has been developed; the results obtained from the model agree well with the experimental observations.     

An anti-diffusive numerical scheme for the simulation of interfaces between compressible fluids by means of a five-equation model

We propose a discretization method of a five-equation model with isobaric closure for the simulation of interfaces between compressible fluids. This numerical solver is a Lagrange–Remap scheme that aims at controlling the numerical diffusion of the interface between both fluids. This method does not involve any interface reconstruction procedure. The solver is equipped with built-in stability and consistency properties and is conservative with respect to mass, momentum, total energy and partial masses. This numerical scheme works with a very broad range of equations of state, including tabulated laws. Properties that ensure a good treatment of the Riemann invariants across the interface are proven. As a consequence, the numerical method does not create spurious pressure oscillations at the interface. We show one-dimensional and two-dimensional classic numerical tests. The results are compared with the approximate solutions obtained with the classic upwind Lagrange–Remap approach, and with experimental and previously published results of a reference test case.     

Onset of the nonlinear dielectric response of glasses in the two-level system model

We have calculated the real part of the nonlinear dielectric susceptibility of amorphous insulators in the kHz range, by using the two-level system model and a nonperturbative numerical quantum approach. At low temperature T, it is first shown that the standard two-level model should lead to a decrease of when the measuring field E is raised, since raising E increases the population of the upper level and induces Rabi oscillations cancelling the ones induced from the ground level. This predicted E-induced decrease of is at odds with experiments. However, a better, though still not perfect, agreement with low-frequency experimental nonlinear data is recovered if, in our fully quantum simulations, interactions between defects are taken into account by a new relaxation rate whose efficiency increases as , as was proposed recently by Burin et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5616 (2001)]. In this approach, the behavior of at low T is mainly explained by the efficiency of this new relaxation channel. Since a quantitative understanding of glasses is still missing, we finally discuss experiments whose results should yield a refined understanding of this new relaxation mechanism: i) a completely new nonlinear behavior should be found for samples whose thickness is ≃ 10 nm; ii) a decrease of nonequilibrium effects should be found when E is increased. Received 19 September 2002 / Received in final form 4 December 2002 Published online 14 March 2003     

Addendum to: Gen. Rel. Grav. 28 (1996) 1161, First Prize Essay for 1996: Neutrino Oscillations and Supernovae

In a 1996 JRO Fellowship Research Proposal (Los Alamos), the author suggested that neutrino oscillations may provide a powerful indirect energy transport mechanism to supernovae explosions. The principal aim of this addendum is to present the relevant unedited text of Section 1 of that proposal. We then briefly remind, (a) of an early suggestion of Mazurek on vacuum neutrino oscillations and their relevance to supernovae explosion, and (b) Wolfenstein's result on suppression of the effect by matter effects. We conclude that whether or not neutrino oscillations play a significant role in supernovae explosions shall depend if there are shells/regions of space in stellar collapse where matter effects play no essential role. Should such regions exist in actual astrophysical situations, the final outcome of neutrino oscillations on supernovae explosions shall depend, in part, on whether or not the LNSD signal is confirmed. Importantly, the reader is reminded that neutrino oscillations form a set of flavor-oscillation clocks and these clock suffer gravitational redshift which can be as large as 20 percent. This effect must be incorporated fully into any calculation of supernova explosion.     

Risk of population extinction from periodic and abrupt changes of environment

A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a sexual character with recombination and mutation. Two cases are considered — oscillatory changes of the environment and abrupt ones (catastrophes). We show how the survival chance of a population depends on the maximum allowed size of the population, the length of the genotypes characterizing individuals, selection pressure and the characteristics of the “climate” changes, either their period of oscillations or the scale of the abrupt shift.     

A delayed modified Ricker map and its cicada-type oscillations

Without trying to develop a model for a biological system, we introduce a delay map that shows a large spike followed by 16 iterations of much smaller values. Upon variation of one of the parameters, we can get a 13 cycles stable oscillation. The analyses of the bifurcation diagrams for the delayed extended Ricker's map yield a straightforward approach to find parameter values for any periodicity. In particular, we determine the values for the 13 and 17 periodic oscillations. We also notice that the bifurcation diagrams show no chaotic regions, and their structures show self-similarity properties. In general, the bifurcation diagrams have self-similarity structures, where n-periodic oscillations change into (n-1)-periodic oscillations.     

Double-families of quasi-positive Darcy-flux approximations with highly anisotropic tensors on structured and unstructured grids

This paper focuses on flux-continuous pressure equation approximation for strongly anisotropic media. Previous work on families of flux-continuous schemes for solving the general geometry–permeability tensor pressure equation has focused on single-parameter families. These schemes have been shown to remove the O(1) errors introduced by standard two-point flux reservoir simulation schemes when applied to full-tensor flow approximation. Improved convergence of the schemes has also been established for specific quadrature points. However these schemes have conditional M-matrices depending on the strength of the off-diagonal tensor coefficients. When applied to cases involving full-tensors arising from strongly anisotropic media, the point-wise continuous schemes can fail to satisfy the maximum principle and induce severe spurious oscillations in the numerical pressure solution.New double-family flux-continuous locally conservative schemes are presented for the general geometry–permeability tensor pressure equation. The new double-family formulation is shown to expand on the current single-parameter range of existing conditional M-matrix schemes. The conditional M-matrix bounds on a double-family formulation are identified for both quadrilateral and triangle cell grids. A quasi-positive QM-matrix analysis is presented that classifies the behaviour of the new schemes with respect to double-family quadrature in regions beyond the M-matrix bounds. The extension to double-family quadrature is shown to be beneficial, resulting in novel optimal anisotropic quadrature schemes. The new methods are applied to strongly anisotropic full-tensor field problems and yield results with sharp resolution, with only minor or practically zero spurious oscillations.     

A family of MPFA finite-volume schemes with full pressure support for the general tensor pressure equation on cell-centered triangular grids

A new family of cell-centered finite-volume schemes is presented for solving the general full-tensor pressure equation of subsurface flow in porous media on arbitary unstructured triangulations. The new schemes are flux continuous and have full pressure support (FPS) over each subcell with continuous pressure imposed across each control-volume sub-interface, in contrast to earlier formulations. The earlier methods are point-wise continuous in pressure and flux with triangle-pressure-support (TPS) which leads to a more limited quadrature range. An M-matrix analysis identifies bounding limits for the schemes to posses a local discrete maximum principle. Conditions for the schemes to be positive definite are also derived.A range of computational examples are presented for unstructured triangular grids, including highly irregular grids, and the new FPS schemes are compared against the earlier pointwise continuous TPS formulations. The earlier pointwise TPS methods can induce strong spurious oscillations for problems involving strong full-tensor anisotropy where the M-matrix conditions are violated, and can lead to decoupled solutions in such cases. Unstructured cell-centered decoupling is investigated. In contrast to TPS, the new FPS formulation leads to well resolved solutions that are essentially free of spurious oscillations.A substantial degree of improved convergence behavior, for both pressure and velocity, is also observed in all convergence tests. This is particularly important for problems involving high anisotropy ratios. Also the new formulation proves to be highly beneficial for an upscaling example, where enhancement of convergence is highly significant for certain quadrature points, clearly demonstrating further advantages of the new formulation.     

Detecting synchronizations in an asymmetric vocal fold model from time series data

A nonlinear modeling approach is presented for the reconstruction of the synchronization structure in an asymmetric two-mass model from time series data. The asymmetric two-mass model describes a variety of normal and pathological human voices associated with synchronous and desynchronous oscillations of the two asymmetric vocal folds. Our technique recovers the synchronization diagram, which yields the regimes of synchronization as well as desynchronization, which are dependent upon the asymmetry parameter and the subglottal pressure. This allows the prediction of the regime of pathological phonation associated with desynchronization of the vocal folds from a few sets of recorded time series. It is shown that the modeling is quite effective when the time series data are chaotic and if they are taken from a regime of desynchronization. We discuss the applicability of the present approach as a diagnostic tool for voice pathologies.     

Phase reset of complex oscillations by a pulsed action

The effect of phase reset in a complex oscillatory system under the action of an external pulse is investigated. After the pulse action, the phase of oscillations in the system acquires a new value, which is virtually independent of the initial phase and is only determined by the pulse parameters (the amplitude and the duration). The phase reset is observed for pulses of different durations, including those considerably shorter than the characteristic scale of oscillations in the system. The effect occurs without any fundamental difference for the cases of regular and chaotic oscillations.