Robust feedback control of thermoacoustic oscillations

Abstract

This study investigates the feedback control of nonlinear thermoacoustic oscillations. A particular aim is to investigate the efficacy of feedback control when the system's nonlinear dynamics are rich. The flame is modelled by the kinematic G-equation. The acoustic model is based on the experimental geometry of R. Balachandran [1], accounting for a spatially non-uniform unsteady flow field and curvature corrections on the flame speed. Crucially, we see that both the gain and the phase vary with the forcing amplitude. This means that, when the flame dynamics is coupled with the acoustic response of the combustor, bifurcations of both the supercritical and subcritical type are possible. This c..