Comparison of Chemiluminescence, OH PLIF, and NO PLIF for Determination of Flame Response to Acoustic Waves

Abstract

Various techniques have been employed by investigators to measure the response of flames to unsteady changes, but there has been no systematic study of the relative benefits and drawbacks of these competing techniques. The goal of this work is to characterize the performance of two different measurement techniques applied in three ways and to examine the differing insights they offer for the response of a flame in a periodic acoustic field. The burner configuration consists of a jet flame in a partial enclosure that stabilizes the flame approximately 8 cm above the jet exit. This burner is installed in an acoustic chamber that has actively-controlled, frequency-selectable, acoustic forcing. Flame response data for different frequencies obtained with chemiluminescence, OR PLIF, and NO PLIF measurement techniques is the basis for this work. Analysis of the data shows the complexity of the measurement required to achieve a given level of understanding of the flame's behavior. The usefulness of these techniques in flame response measurements individually and taken in combination is discussed, with examples.