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Item Coupled Dynamic Analysis of Flow in the Inlet Section of a Wave Rotor Constant Volume Combustor(2011-12) Smith, Keith Cameron; Nalim, M. Razi; Zhu, Likun; Xie, JianA wave rotor constant volume combustor (WRCVC) was designed and built as a collaborative work of Rolls Royce LibertyWorks, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), and Purdue University, and ran experimental tests at Purdue's Zucrow Laboratories in 2009. Instrumentation of the WRCVC rig inlet flow included temperature and pressure transducers upstream of the venturi and at the fuel delivery plane. Other instrumentation included exhaust pressures and temperatures. In addition, ion sensors, dynamic pressure sensors, and accelerometers were used to instrument the rotating hardware. The rig hardware included inlet guide vanes directly in front of the rotating hardware, which together with concern for damage potential, prevented use of any pressure transducers at the entrance to the rotor. For this reason, a complete understanding of the conditions at the WRCVC inlet is unavailable, requiring simulations of the WRCVC to estimate the inlet pressure at a specific operating condition based on airflow. The operation of a WRCVC rig test is a sequence of events over a short time span. These events include introduction of the main air flow followed by time-sequenced delivery of fuel, lighting of the ignition source, and the combustion sequence. The fast changing conditions in the rig inlet hardware make necessary a time-dependent computation of the rig inlet section in order to simulate the overall rig operation. The chosen method for computing inlet section temperature and pressure was a time-dependent lumped volume model of the inlet section hardware, using a finite difference modified Euler predictor-corrector method for computing the continuity and energy equations. This is coupled with perfect gas prediction of venturi air and fuel flow rates, pressure drag losses at the fuel nozzles, pressure losses by mass addition of the fuel or nitrogen purge, friction losses at the inlet guide vanes, and a correlation of the non-dimensional flow characteristics of the WRCVC. The flow characteristics of the WRCVC are computed by varying the non-dimensional inlet stagnation pressure and the WRCVC's operational conditions, assuming constant rotational speed and inlet stagnation temperature. This thesis documents the creation of a computer simulation of the entire WRCVC rig, to understand the pressure losses in the inlet system and the dynamic coupling of the inlet section and the WRCVC, so that an accurate prediction of the WRCVC rotor inlet conditions can be computed. This includes the computational development of the WRCVC upstream rig dynamic model, the background behind supporting computations, and results for one test sequence. The computations provide a clear explanation of why the pressures at the rotor inlet differ so much from the upstream measured values. The pressure losses correlate very well with the computer predictions and the dynamic response tracks well with the estimation of measured airflow. A simple Fortran language computer program listing is included, which students can use to simulate charging or discharging of a container.Item Experimental and Numerical investigation of hot-jet ignition with shock effects in a constant-volume combustor(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2015-04-17) Paik, Kyong-Yup; Khan, Nazmuzzaman; Tarraf Kojok, Ali; Nalim, M. RaziA wave rotor, an array of channels arranged around the axis of a cylindrical drum, can be used as a combustor in gas turbine engines in order to reduce the consumption of the fuel by increasing the fuel efficiency. Since the wave rotor combustor consumes fuel in constant volume channels, the engine system derives benefit from not only high temperature of the combusted gas, but also high pressure by containing the hot gas in the channels. Combustion of gas mixture in one of channels ignited by hot jet penetration under the necessity of rapid ignition accompanies complex non-steady phenomena, such as shock wave propagation, shock-flame interaction, and vortex generation in the channel. Especially, when a shock wave passes through the flame surface, the heat release rate and fuel consumption rate can be suddenly increased by a deformation of the flame surface, which are closely related with the combustion time of the fuel mixture. This research aims to investigate the ignition process, and the shock-flame interaction in a constant volume combustor experimentally and numerically to extract useful information for future wave rotor combustor design. Varıous mixtures of CH4 and H2 with equivalence ratio 1.0 were set as fuel for the main chamber, providing variation in chemical kinetic timescale. The hot gas jet consists of combusted gas mixture of a fuel composed of 50% CH4+ 50% H2 (by volume), burned in the pre-chamber with air at equivalence ratio 1.1. For experimental research, three dynamic pressure transducers were installed on the main chamber to measure the pressure changes caused by shock waves and flame propagation in the main chamber. Time-dependent flame and shock wave images up to 20,000 fps were obtained by a high speed camera, and a Z-type schlieren system. The schlieren technique, an optimum system to capture shock waves in the channel, utilizes light deviation due to flow density gradient, visualizing flows which are invisible to the human eye. In numerical research, adaptive mesh refinement for velocity and temperature, and multi-zone reaction modeling to speed up the kinetics were used to analyze turbulent combustion with minimum computational cost. Advanced post-processing techniques were used to calculate flame surface area, heat release rate, and vorticity deposited on flame surface to understand the flame wrinkling and surface increase. Finally, pressure data in main chamber, flame propagation speed, and the large scale of vortices under different initial conditions obtained from the experimental study were compared to the numerical results under the same conditions in order to suggest reference data for designing future wave rotors.Item Transient Thermal Response of Turbulent Compressible Boundary Layers(2011-08) Li, Hongwei; Nalim, M. Razi; Merkle, Charles L.A numerical method is developed with the capability to predict transient thermal boundary layer response under various flow and thermal conditions. The transient thermal boundary layer variation due to a moving compressible turbulent fluid of varying temperature was numerically studied on a two-dimensional semi-infinite flat plate. The compressible Reynolds-averaged boundary layer equations are transformed into incompressible form through the Dorodnitsyn–Howarth transformation and then solved with similarity transformations. Turbulence is modeled using a two-layer eddy viscosity model developed by Cebeci and Smith, and the turbulent Prandtl number formulation originally developed by Kays and Crawford. The governing differential equations are discretized with the Keller-box method. The numerical accuracy is validated through grid-independence studies and comparison with the steady state solution. In turbulent flow as in laminar, the transient heat transfer rates are very different from that obtained from quasi-steady analysis. It is found that the time scale for response of the turbulent boundary layer to far-field temperature changes is 40% less than for laminar flow, and the turbulent local Nusselt number is approximately 4 times that of laminar flow at the final steady state.