A Methodology for On the Fly Acoustic Characterization of the Feeding Line Impedances in a Turbulent Swirled Combustor

Abstract

A methodology is proposed to determine on the fly the acoustic impedances at the boundaries of a combustor under operation and without the need for an external forcing device. The methodology is applied hereby to obtain the reflection coefficients of the air and fuel feeding lines supplying a swirled combustor operating in lean conditions and featuring an unstable regime. It is based on a three-microphone technique and uses the combustion roar noise inside the chamber to get estimates of the boundary impedances in the low frequency limit. Conditions under which this method yields reliable results for the reflection coefficient are examined, and a criterion based on the coherence between microphone signals is proposed to determine the frequency bandwidth for impedance reconstruction. The method also takes into account the flow Mach number in the supplying pipes, which can be non-negligible because of their reduced diameter. The technique is validated against data obtained in a dedicated impedance measurement setup equipped with a high-efficiency loudspeaker.