Novel In-Service Combustion Instability Detection Using the Chirp Fourier Higher Order Spectra

Abstract

Combustion instabilities, known as “rumble” and “screech” are the self-excited aerodynamic instabilities in the gas turbine combustor. They cause the premature failures of the gas turbine components, and, consequently, the failure of the gas turbine as a whole. Because of the complex physical effects underlying the rumble and the screech phenomena, it is difficult to eliminate them completely at the design stage. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the detection of the combustion instabilities in the gas turbine in order to prevent its prolonged operation in this mode. There are known techniques, which are able to detect the rumble and the screech in gas turbines. Most of them do not consider the combustion instabilities as non-linear and non-stationary events and, therefore, have lower detection efficiency. Novel technique for in-service combustion instability detection is implemented in this paper. This technique overcomes the limitations of the existing solutions.