The development and performance of a perforated plate burner to produce vitiated flow with negligible swirl under engine-relevant gas turbine conditions.

The development and performance of a perforated plate burner (PPB) operating using premixed natural gas and air at engine-relevant inlet temperatures and combustor pressures with thermal powers up to 1 MW is discussed. A significant benefit of using burners with simplified flow fields, such as the PPB, for experimental studies in the laboratory is the potential for decoupling the complex fluid dynamics in typical combustors from the chemical kinetics. The primary motivation for developing this burner was to use it as a source of vitiated flow with negligible swirl for reacting jet in vitiated crossflow experiments.

The development of an optically accessible, high-power combustion test rig.

This work summarizes the development of a gas turbine combustion experiment which will allow advanced optical measurements to be made at realistic engine conditions. Facility requirements are addressed, including instrumentation and control needs for remote operation when working with high energy flows. The methodology employed in the design of the optically accessible combustion chamber is elucidated, including window considerations and thermal management of the experimental hardware under extremely high heat loads.