Flame-acoustic response measurements in a high-pressure, 42-injector, cryogenic rocket thrust chamber

Abstract

This work presents measurements of acoustically driven flame dynamics in a 42-element, cryogenic oxygen-hydrogen rocket thrust chamber under supercritical injection conditions. The experiment shows self-excited combustion instabilities for certain operating conditions, and this work describes the nature of the flame dynamics driving the acoustic field, as far as it can be ascertained from state-of-the-art optical measurements. Optical access has been realized in the combustion chamber with both fibre-optical probes and a viewing window. The probes collect point-like measurements of filtered OH* radiation. Their signals were used to calculate the gain and phase of intensity oscillations with respect to acoustic pressure for both stable and unstable operating conditions. Through the window, synchronized high-speed imaging of the flame in filtered OH* and blue radiation wavelengths was collected. The 2D flame response was related to the local acoustic pressure to investigate the distributed intensity and phase relationships. The flame response from OH* measurements is in agreement with the theory of Rayleigh. For stable conditions the oscillations of combustion and pressure were out of phase, whereas for an excited chamber 1T mode the oscillations were closely in phase. The integrated Rayleigh index from blue imaging was not consistent with the OH* results. The reason lies in the depth of field captured by this type of imaging, and must be used in a complementary fashion together with OH* imaging. The flame response values and 2D visualization presented in this work are expected to be of value for the validation of numerical modelling of combustion instabilities.