LES of an ignition sequence in a gas turbine engine

Journal Article · Tue Jul 15 04:00:00 EDT 2008 · Combustion and Flame

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COMBUSTFLAME.2008.02.006· OSTI ID:21044869

Boileau, M; Staffelbach, G; Cuenot, B ^[1]; Poinsot, T ^[2]; Berat, C ^[3]

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1. CERFACS, Toulouse (France)
2. IMFT - CNRS, Toulouse (France)
3. Turbomeca (SAFRAN group), Bordes (France)

Being able to ignite or reignite a gas turbine engine in a cold and rarefied atmosphere is a critical issue for many manufacturers. From a fundamental point of view, the ignition of the first burner and the flame propagation from one burner to another are phenomena that are usually not studied. The present work is a large eddy simulation (LES) of these phenomena. To simulate a complete ignition sequence in an annular chamber, LES has been applied to the full 360 geometry, including 18 burners. This geometry corresponds to a real gas turbine chamber. Massively parallel computing (700 processors on a Cray XT3 machine) was essential to perform such a large calculation. Results show that liquid fuel injection has a strong influence on the ignition times. Moreover, the rate of flame progress from burner to burner is much higher than the turbulent flame speed due to a major effect of thermal expansion. This flame speed is also strongly modified by the main burner aerodynamics due to the swirled injection. Finally, the variability of the combustor sectors and quadrant ignition times is highlighted. (author)

• OSTI ID: 21044869
• Journal Information: Combustion and Flame, Journal Name: Combustion and Flame Journal Issue: 1-2 Vol. 154; ISSN CBFMAO; ISSN 0010-2180
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
AERODYNAMICS
COMBUSTION
Euler-Euler approach
FLAME PROPAGATION
GAS TURBINE ENGINES
IGNITION
INJECTION
LIQUID FUELS
Large eddy simulation
SIMULATION
THERMAL EXPANSION
TWO-PHASE FLOW
Turbulent combustion
VELOCITY
VORTEX FLOW