Faculty: Dr. Valentin Soloiu, Dr. Marcel Ilie, Mech Eng.

Objectives: The combustion thermo-acoustic instabilities and emissions phenomena will be investigated experimentally in a gas turbine with synthetic kerosene.

Equipment, Instrumentation and Methods employed by the REU students: The SR-30 jet engine in the lab, has a max speed is 77,000 RPM and is fully instrumented with five pressure sensors (Setra Model 209), K-type thermocouples, at each stage. It has flow sensors and load cell and it is multifuel-capable. The REU students will learn the Brayton cycle, will measure thrust, and pressures and temperatures at each turbojet stage, learn DAQ and the use the B&K NVH instrumentation with three axial accelerometers and microphones (diffuse, multi, free-field beamforming); that enable multi-analysis; study the theoretical and practical FFT; CPB and loudness display; order analysis; data recording; photon analysis; They will be trained and investigate emissions with a MKS Fast Fourier Analyzer: FTIR 20 species & Bosch soot analyzer 415S and learn about the Mie scattering theory while using the He-Ne laser to analyze sprays’ development and mixture formation. They will learn to develop meshing, flow simulations in Ansys-Fluent, visualizations and results correlations.

REU students’ research outcomes and educational outcomes: Combustor noise generally occurs from the 200 to 600 Hz range [13, 14]. This range of the FFT and CPB plots will be analyzed by REU students to see the differences in the noise and vibrations caused by Jet A and synthetic IPK. IPK yielded better results than Jet A, except at 550Hz as seen in Fig. 4.1 left, where a combustion instability event has been recorded. The REU students will work to elucidate the triggering factors of this phenomena. They will be able to identify the factors that affect combustion in gas turbines; learn various gas and NVH measurement techniques; understand the fundamentals of jet and spray combustion; develop knowledge on turbine exhaust, emissions, and aero-acoustic measurements and analysis, including compressor and turbine 3D flow, noise and vibrations. They will produce a draft paper & poster for a conference.