Application of spontaneous Raman scattering for measurements of thermal non-equilibrium in high-speed mixing and combustion

Mixing-induced vibrational non-equilibrium is studied in the turbulent shear layer between a high-speed jet and a surrounding hot-air coflow. The vibrational and rotational temperatures of N2 and O2 are determined by fitting measured spontaneous Raman scattering spectra to a model that allows for different equilibrium distributions of the vibrational and rotational states. The mixing of the jet fluid with the coflow gases occurs over microsecond time scales, which is sufficiently fast to induce vibrational non-equilibrium in the mixture of hot and cold gases. I measured the non-equilibrium on the hot side of the shear layer, but not on the cold side where the vibrational population in the first hot band is negligible. The effect of fluctuating temperatures on the time-averaged Raman measurement was quantified using single-shot Rayleigh thermometry. The Raman scattering results were found to be insensitive to fluctuations except where the flame is present intermittently. It was also found that the measured non-equilibrium increases in the shear layer when N2 is removed from the jet fluid, indicating that the measurements average two competing processes that occur simultaneously at a molecular scale: vibrationally hot N2 cooled by the fast jet fluid and vibrationally cold jet fluid heated by a hot coflow. An interesting inference is that the averaging effect is always present, regardless of the measurement resolution. No measurable vibrational non-equilibrium is found in the O¬2¬ molecules in the same non-reacting regions. This difference between species temperatures violates the two-temperature assumption often used in the modeling of high-temperature non-equilibrium flow. A new technique was developed to obtain spontaneous Raman scattering temperature measurements from a single laser pulse. This technique required the construction of a multiple-pass cell to obtain adequate scattered signal. Additionally, the pulse was stretched temporally with a system of partial reflectors and time-flight-delay ring cavities in order to reduce the peak power of the 1 J laser pulses. These measurements were found to be in agreement with the previous time-average results and allowed for measurement to be made near the fluctuating base of a lifted flame – a region where time-averaged measurements do not give meaningful results.Aerospace Engineerin

Experimental Characterization of Combustion Instabilities and Flow-Flame Dynamics in a Partially-Premixed Gas Turbine Model Combustor.

Partially-premixed, swirl combustion is applied in gas turbine combustors to achieve flame stabilization and reduced emission production. However, this method is also inherently sensitive to combustion instabilities which can cause large pressure, velocity, and heat release fluctuations. This thesis investigates thermoacoustic coupling created by flow-flame dynamics in a gas turbine model combustor (GTMC) for a variety of fuels and operating flow rates. Several naturally occurring instability modes were identified to control the acoustic response of the system, including Helmholtz resonances from the plenum and convective-acoustic effects which cause equivalence ratio oscillations. Laser Doppler velocimetry was used to measure radial flow in the GTMC, which can set up flow-fields which create loudly resonating flat-shaped flames, in comparison to quiet V-shaped flames. Flame location and shape altered convective time delays which determine the relative phases of pressure and heat release oscillations. Simultaneous pressure and chemiluminescence imaging showed that the heat release, pressure fluctuations, and flame motion are all coupled at the same instability frequency. Videos of the flame motion also revealed that the precessing vortex core (PVC), created by the swirling flow, influences the rocking behavior of the flame. Acetone was added to the fuel to act as a tracer in fluorescence measurements which indicated the localization of unburned fuel. It was discovered that fuel was distributed in lobes which corresponded to locations surrounding the shear layer outside of the central recirculation zone, and that the relative distribution of the lobes adjusted to forcing by the flow. Finally, high-speed formaldehyde planar laser-induced fluorescence was applied to study the motion of preheat zone surfaces in response to the oscillations of the instability. The flame surface density and wrinkling fluctuated at the acoustic frequency and displayed dampened motions correlated with the PVC precession. In non-resonating flames, the behavior of the formaldehyde structure and marked flame surfaces were dominated by the PVC motion, but the degree of surface area fluctuations was reduced compared to unstable flames. Instabilities in the GTMC are driven by a complex combination of thermoacoustic and flow-field couplings which are influenced by the operational conditions, fueling, mixing, and convective time delays.PhDAerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102385/1/pallison_1.pd

Experimental Investigation of Self Sustained Lean Premixed Prevaporized Combustion Instabilities by Phase Averaged Laser Diagnostic Techniques.

Interest in NOX pollution reduction has led to novel combustion techniques including Lean Premixed Prevaporized (LPP) combustion. However, LPP combustion is inherently prone to instabilities which can lead to gas turbine engine blowout and engine component failure. While these instabilities previously have been studied in simple laboratory burners, there is a need to show the connection between these lab scales and the instabilities that occur when a realistic, commercial LPP multi-swirl fuel injector is operated with Jet-A fuel at elevated pressures, temperatures and mass flow rates (such as in the present study). In order to investigate the combustion instabilities in an LPP combustor, a realistic test rig was modified to test two similar commercial LPP fuel injectors using liquid Jet-A fuel at high pressures and high pre-heat temperatures. Three groups of instabilities were identified based on the frequency of the pressure oscillations in the combustion chamber: high frequency (>250 Hz), low frequency (50-200 Hz), and very low frequency (<50 Hz). The low frequency and very low frequency oscillations were further investigated through the use of simultaneous high speed video and pressure data. Additionally, the flow field during the low frequency instability was measured through phase averaged particle image velocimetry (PIV). These results show that the flame has a large scale response at both types of frequencies. The low frequency instability was determined to be a Helmholtz bulk mode due to equivalence ratio oscillations from the oscillating air flow through the injector. The very low frequency instability was determined to be a flashback / blowout phenomenon near the lean blowout limit. A mathematical model was proposed which predicts the frequency of the very low frequency instability. The findings of this thesis with regard to the source of combustion instabilities provide data which can guide future studies in this area and designs of advanced, low polluting gas turbines.PHDAerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95931/1/temme_1.pd

Second Conference on NDE for Aerospace Requirements

Nondestructive evaluation and inspection procedures must constantly improve rapidly in order to keep pace with corresponding advances being made in aerospace material and systems. In response to this need, the 1989 Conference was organized to provide a forum for discussion between the materials scientists, systems designers, and NDE engineers who produce current and future aerospace systems. It is anticipated that problems in current systems can be resolved more quickly and that new materials and structures can be designed and manufactured in such a way as to be more easily inspected and to perform reliably over the life cycle of the system

Measurement and Simulation of Suppression Effects in a Buoyant Turbulent Line Fire

An experimental and numerical study of turbulent fire suppression is presented. For this work, a novel and canonical facility has been developed, featuring a buoyant, turbulent, methane or propane-fueled diffusion flame suppressed via either nitrogen dilution of the oxidizer or application of a fine water mist. Flames are stabilized on a slot burner surrounded by a co-flowing oxidizer, which allows controlled delivery of either suppressant to achieve a range of conditions from complete combustion through partial and total flame quenching. A minimal supply of pure oxygen is optionally applied along the burner to provide a strengthened flame base that resists liftoff extinction and permits the study of substantially weakened turbulent flames. The carefully designed facility features well-characterized inlet and boundary conditions that are especially amenable to numerical simulation. Non-intrusive diagnostics provide detailed measurements of suppression behavior, yielding insight into the governing suppression processes, and aiding the development and validation of advanced suppression models. Diagnostics include oxidizer composition analysis to determine suppression potential, flame imaging to quantify visible flame structure, luminous and radiative emissions measurements to assess sooting propensity and heat losses, and species-based calorimetry to evaluate global heat release and combustion efficiency. The studied flames experience notable suppression effects, including transition in color from bright yellow to dim blue, expansion in flame height and structural intermittency, and reduction in radiative heat emissions. Still, measurements indicate that the combustion efficiency remains close to unity, and only near the extinction limit do the flames experience an abrupt transition from nearly complete combustion to total extinguishment. Measurements are compared with large eddy simulation results obtained using the Fire Dynamics Simulator, an open-source computational fluid dynamics software package. Comparisons of experimental and simulated results are used to evaluate the performance of available models in predicting fire suppression. Simulations in the present configuration highlight the issue of spurious reignition that is permitted by the classical eddy-dissipation concept for modeling turbulent combustion. To address this issue, simple treatments to prevent spurious reignition are developed and implemented. Simulations incorporating these treatments are shown to produce excellent agreement with the experimentally measured data, including the global combustion efficiency

Magnetic sensors and gradiometers for detection of objects

Disertační práce popisuje vývoj nových detekčních zařízení s anizotropními magnetorezistoryThis thesis describes development of innovative sensor systems based on anisotropi

Laser Raman diagnostics in subsonic and supersonic turbulent jet diffusion flames

Ultraviolet (UV) spontaneous vibrational Raman scattering combined with laser-induced predissociative fluorescence (LIPF) is developed for temperature and multi-species concentration measurements. Simultaneous measurements of temperature, major species (H2, O2, N2, H2O), and minor species (OH) concentrations are made with a 'single' narrow band KrF excimer laser in subsonic and supersonic lifted turbulent hydrogen-air diffusion flames. The UV Raman system is calibrated with a flat-flame diffusion burner operated at several known equivalence ratios from fuel-lean to fuel-rich. Temperature measurements made by the ratio of Stokes/anti-Stokes signal and by the ideal gas law are compared. The single shot measurement precision for concentration and temperature measurement is 5 to 10 pct. Calibration constants and bandwidth factors are determined from the flat burner measurements and used in a data reduction program to arrive at temperature and species concentration measurements. These simultaneous measurements of temperature and multi-species concentrations allow a better understanding of the complex turbulence-chemistry interactions and provide information for the input and validation of CFD models

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationDigital image processing has wide ranging applications in combustion research. The analysis of digital images is used in practically every scale of studying combustion phenomena from the scale of individual atoms to diagnosing and controlling large-scale combustors. Digital image processing is one of the fastest-growing scientific areas in the world today. From being able to reconstruct low-resolution grayscale images from transmitted signals, the capabilities have grown to enabling machines carrying out tasks that would normally require human vision, perception, and reasoning. Certain applications in combustion science benefit greatly from recent advances in image processing. Unfortunately, since the two fields - combustion and image processing research - stand relatively far from each other, the most recent results are often not known well enough in the areas where they may be applied with great benefits. This work aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of certain measurements in combustion science by selecting, adapting, and implementing the appropriate techniques originally developed in the image processing area. A number of specific applications were chosen that cover a wide range of physical scales of combustion phenomena, and specific image processing methodologies were proposed to improve or enable measurements in studying such phenomena. The selected applications include the description and quantification of combustion-derived carbon nanostructure, the three-dimensional optical diagnostics of combusting pulverized-coal particles and the optical flow velocimetry and quantitative radiation imaging of a pilot-scale oxy-coal flame. In the field of the structural analysis of soot, new structural parameters were derived and the extraction and fidelity of existing ones were improved. In the field of pulverized-coal combustion, the developed methodologies allow for studying the detailed mechanisms of particle combustion in three dimensions. At larger scales, the simultaneous measurement of flame velocity, spectral radiation, and pyrometric properties were realized

Apollo Lightcraft Project

This second year of the NASA/USRA-sponsored Advanced Aeronautical Design effort focused on systems integration and analysis of the Apollo Lightcraft. This beam-powered, single-stage-to-orbit vehicle is envisioned as the shuttlecraft of the 21st century. The five person vehicle was inspired largely by the Apollo Command Module, then reconfigured to include a new front seat with dual cockpit controls for the pilot and co-pilot, while still retaining the 3-abreast crew accommodations in the rear seat. The gross liftoff mass is 5550 kg, of which 500 kg is the payload and 300 kg is the LH2 propellant. The round trip cost to orbit is projected to be three orders of magnitude lower than the current space shuttle orbiter. The advanced laser-driven 5-speed combined-cycle engine has shiftpoints at Mach 1, 5, 11 and 25+. The Apollo Lightcraft can climb into low Earth orbit in three minutes, or fly to any spot on the globe in less than 45 minutes. Detailed investigations of the Apollo Lightcraft Project this second year further evolved the propulsion system design, while focusing on the following areas: (1) man/machine interface; (2) flight control systems; (3) power beaming system architecture; (4) re-entry aerodynamics; (5) shroud structural dynamics; and (6) optimal trajectory analysis. The principal new findings are documented. Advanced design efforts for the next academic year (1988/1989) will center on a one meter+ diameter spacecraft: the Lightcraft Technology Demonstrator (LTD). Detailed engineering design and analyses, as well as critical proof-of-concept experiments, will be carried out on this small, near-term machine. As presently conceived, the LTD could be constructed using state of the art components derived from existing liquid chemical rocket engine technology, advanced composite materials, and high power laser optics

Charging effects in niobium nanostructures

Three types of metallic nanostructures comprising niobium were investigated experimentally; in all three types, electric transport at very low temperatures was governed by Coulomb blockade effects. 1. Thin film strips of niobium could be tuned into resistor strips by an electrochemical anodisation process, using microfabricated masks and in situ resistance monitoring. These resistors showed a transition from superconducting to insulating behaviour with increasing sheet resistance, occurring at a value approximately equal to the quantum resistance for Cooper pairs, h/(4e^2). 2. Combining the anodisation technique with lateral size minimisation by shadow evaporation, devices in a single electron transistor-like configuration with two weak links and a small island between these were made. Direct evidence for the Coulomb blockade in the anodisation thinned niobium films was found when the transport characteristics could be modulated periodically by sweeping the voltage applied to a gate electrode placed on top of the structure. 3. Conventional single electron transistors with Al base electrodes, AlO_x barriers formed in situ by oxidation, and Nb top electrodes were made by angular evaporation. The output current noise of such a transistor was measured as a function of bias voltage, gate voltage, and temperature. The low frequency noise was found to be dominated by charge input noise. The dependence of the noise on the bias voltage is consistent with self-heating of the transistor activating the noise sources.Comment: PhD thesis, 177 pages, 42 figures (images downsampled