Stability and Sensitivity Analysis of Hydrodynamic Instabilities in Industrial Swirled Injection Systems

Abstract

The hydrodynamic instability in an industrial, two-staged, counter-rotative, swirled injector of highly complex geometry is under investigation. Large eddy simulations (LES) show that the complicated and strongly nonparallel flow field in the injector is superimposed by a strong precessing vortex core (PVC). Mean flow fields of LES, validated by experimental particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements, are used as input for both local and global linear stability analysis (LSA). It is shown that the origin of the instability is located at the exit plane of the primary injector. Mode shapes of both global and local LSA are compared to dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) based on LES snapshots, showing good agreement. The estimated frequencies for the instability are in good agreement with both the experiment and the simulation. Furthermore, the adjoint mode shapes retrieved by the global approach are used to find the best location for periodic forcing in order to control the PVC.