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Effects of Inlet Parameters on the Performance of Bluff Body Combustion

Abstract

This paper reports the observations made during the numerical simulation study of high Reynolds number flows in a bluff body combustor of gas turbine engines. The numerical results were first validated with the results studied experimentally at the University of Sydney and at Sandia National Laboratories and then analysed under different inlet conditions. The analysis involves a comparative study of effects of different flow conditions of the particular geometry. Effects of the inlet velocity, equivalence ratio and bluff body shape on the combustion efficiency (in terms of mass fraction of CO2) and exhaust gas temperature were examined. It was found that the flow field is characterized by high turbulence at the onset of the hollow cylindrical bluff body used in the study. The results also show that the exhaust gas temperature decreases first and then increases with the decrease of the velocity ratio. Furthermore, comparatively high temperatures can be maintained over the whole equivalence ratio range at a moderate velocity magnitude

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