Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/R61994/01
Title:	Combustion Dynamics
Principal Investigator:	Dowling, Professor Dame A
Other Investigators:	Cant, Professor R Kaminski, Professor C Mastorakos, Professor E
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	LaVision GmbH Photonic Solutions Plc Rolls-Royce Plc (UK) University of Cambridge
Department:	Engineering
Organisation:	University of Cambridge
Scheme:	JREI
Starts:	01 January 2002	Ends:	31 December 2003	Value (£):	172,848
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Combustion
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Aerospace, Defence and Marine
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
The quest for cleaner combustion is driving new and challenging technologies. Lean premixed (LP) combustion is very successful at reducing unwanted emissions, but it makes the combustor prone to instability and to auto-ignition. Instability arises because pressure fluctuations in the combustor drive changes in fuel-air ratio due to the different acoustic impedances of the fuel and air supply systems. The instantaneous rate of combustion is strongly susceptible to this timevarying mixture fraction and the resulting unsteady heat release can reinforce the pressure fluctuations, resulting in selfexcited oscillations. This coupling may be eliminated by mixing the fuel and air over the period of oscillation, but this introduces the possibility of auto-ignition.Design of reliable LP combustors therefore requires a careful balance between the dangers of two different types of combustion dynamics - acoustically-coupled instability and auto-ignition. The proposed research will develop and apply advanced diagnostic techniques to obtain insight into these unsteady processes, in a variety of combustion systems ranging from simple burners to scaled industrial pre-mixers. A fundamental understanding will be derived from a close interaction between the experimental programme and modelling work, using both computational fluid dynamics and theoretical models
Key Findings
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Organisation Website:	http://www.cam.ac.uk