On combustion noise related to chemical reactions

An inhomogeneous pressure wave equation has been derived for chemically reacting multicomponent gas mixtures to predict the acoustic field associated with combustion. Out of three source terms for the generation of combustion noise—namely, fluctuations in the heat release rate, in the momentum flow rate and in the viscous and diffusive working—the first is examined to relate this acoustic source strength to the concentration and temperature fluctuations through the chemical kinetics of reaction processes. The relationships between the spectral features of combustion noise and the statistical aspects of these fluctuations are obtained. The essential feature that combustion noise has substantial low-frequency components is explained by the dependence of the contribution of reaction fluctuations on the integral of the time correlation with respect to the correlation time.