| Deliberate continuation of the combustion in the turbine passages of a gas turbine engine has the potential to increase the efficiency and the specific thrust or power of current gas-turbine engines. This concept, known as a turbine-burner, must overcome many challenges before becoming a viable product. One major challenge is the injection, mixing, ignition, and burning of fuel within a short residence time in a turbine passage characterized by large three-dimensional accelerations. One method of increasing the residence time is to inject the fuel into a cavity adjacent to the turbine passage, creating a low-speed zone for mixing and combustion. This situation is simulated numerically, with the turbine passage modeled as a turning, converging channel flow of high-temperature, vitiated air adjacent to a cavity. Both two- and three-dimensional, reacting and non-reacting calculations are performed, examining the effects of channel curvature and convergence, fuel and additional air injection configurations, and inlet conditions. Two-dimensional, non-reacting calculations show that higher aspect ratio cavities improve the fluid interaction between the channel flow and the cavity, and that the cavity dimensions are important for enhancing the mixing. Two-dimensional, reacting calculations show that converging channels improve the combustion efficiency. Channel curvature can be either beneficial or detrimental to combustion efficiency, depending on the location of the cavity and the fuel and air injection configuration. Three-dimensional, reacting calculations show that injecting fuel and air so as to disrupt the natural motion of the cavity stimulates three-dimensional instability and improves the combustion efficiency. |
