Combust-o-Acoustics: Energy Transition and Implications

Acoustics is an integral constituent of most of combustion processes. While combustion advancements have revolutionized human life, acoustics induced combustion also represents a dominant form of instability. Thermo-acoustics, as an intense area of scientific research, covers a wide range of applications viz., industrial (electricity generation), transportation (jet and space propulsion), engineering (system efficiency and operations) and scientific research. The presence of such inept working systems with instability is likely to result in significant loss of resources, infrastructure, property, mankind, nature, with huge amount of money being spent on research activities. Appreciable work has been done before however; the heterogeneous nature of the problem has prevented comprehensive understanding. Thus, the need to investigate and characterize the acoustics imbibed combustion processes to suggest better combustion alternatives/enhance effectiveness and to minimize the resultant hazards. Present work, attempts to resolve the low effectiveness of combustion systems by classification of thermal acoustics and related major hazards. A simple experimental setup was upraised comprising of butane cylinder with nozzle and systematic experimentation was carried out to explore the phenomenon of energy transition in combustion with acoustics. The exploration was carried out for varying fuel mass flow rates, L/D ratios, material of tubes, interspace distance and counter acoustics impingement. The results were observed with acoustics measurement, along with type and structure of flames. The work is primarily motivated by the need to have technologically enhanced combustion understanding and for fire safety applications. The results exhibit that presence of external enclosures have significant effect on thermoacoustics and with coupled redundancy effect, a special pattern noted was both the controlling parameters results in reduction in maximum acoustics rise and increase in maximum drop levels this contributing significantly to enhancement of system efficiency. The results can be of pertinent significance for the testing, validation of conventional systems and designing of the efficient and safer futuristic propulsive systems.