Sensitivity of Combustion Driven Structural Dynamics and Damage to Thermo-Acoustic Instability: Combustion-Acoustics-Vibration

The dynamic combustion process generates high amplitude pressure oscillations due to thermo-acoustic instabilities, which are excited within the gas turbine. The combustion instabilities have a significant destructive impact on the life of the liner material due to the high cyclic vibration amplitudes at elevated temperatures. This paper presents a methodology developed for mechanical integrity analysis relevant to gas turbine combustors and the results of an investigation of the combustion-acoustics-vibration interaction by means of structural dynamics. In this investigation, the combustion dynamics was found to be very sensitive to the thermal power of the system and the air-fuel ratio of the mixture fed into the combustor. The unstable combustion caused a dominant pressure peak at a characteristic frequency, which is the first acoustic eigenfrequency of the system. Besides, the higher-harmonics of this peak were generated over a wide frequency-band. The frequencies of the higher-harmonics were observed to be close to the structural eigenfrequencies of the system. The structural integrity of both the intact and damaged test specimens mounted on the combustor was monitored by vibration-based and thermal-based techniques during the combustion operation. The flexibility method was found to be accurate to detect, localize, and identify the damage. Furthermore, a temperature increase was observed around the damage due to hot gas leakage from the combustor that can induce detrimental thermal stresses enhancing the lifetime consumption.