FETC Dynamic Gas Turbine Combustor Simulations
at the
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

On August 31 a new regional partnership, the Super Computing Science Consortium or (SC)², was established. The partners are the Federal Energy Technology Center (FETC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research laboratory with campuses in Pittsburgh and Morgantown, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), Carnegie Mellon University, West Virginia University and the West Virginia Governor's Office of Technology.

Douglas Straub, George Richards, and William Rogers are using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model and study fluid flow and combustion in the FETC Dynamic Gas Turbine Combustion test rig. These CFD simulations use the FLUENT CFD code (Fluent, Inc., Lebanon NH) and the Cray T3E supercomputer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The simulations of the FETC test rig are used to analyze unsteady combustion of methane in a swirl-stabilized flame. In the test rig, pressurized preheated combustion air enters the fuel nozzle and passes through swirl vanes whose location relative to the fuel nozzle exit can be adjusted. The natural gas fuel mixes with the swirling combustion air downstream of the swirl vanes. Simulation results have shown that swirl vane location and flow conditions can affect the flame shape and its orientation within the combustor, which is important in determining when combustion oscillations and acoustic pressure oscillations will interact to produce large amplitude pressure oscillations.

The visualizations on this page, produced by Nick Nystrom (PSC), portray various views into these combustion simulations. Such visualizations provide engineers with detailed insights into the complex time evolution of the combustion process, clearly showing the development and effects of pressure oscillations in the combustor.

Visualization 1. This figure depicts the 0.001 mole fraction CH4 isosurface, colored by temperature. Click here or on the image to view an animation in QuickTime format (4.9 MB).

The Cray T3E is necessary to handle the 750,000 computational cells required for three-dimensional analysis and to study the transient behavior of the combustor. This powerful computer platform also allowed multiple simulations to be performed in a relatively short time period to study the effects of varying swirl vane position, nozzle velocity, and fuel-air ratio on flow and combustion. These simulations are being used together with experiments at FETC to refine the models, to direct measurements, and to optimize the design of the combustor.

Visualization 2. This visualization looks at a different isosurface, namely |gradient(T)|=15000, where T is the temperature. Both the isosurface and the combustor are colored by temperature. Click here or on the image to view an animation in MPEG-1 format (487 kB). Alternatively, also available are two looped sequences in QuickTime: a 10-cycle loop, resolution 320x240 (4.54MB) and a 5-cycle loop, resolution 720x486 (7.65MB).

Visualization 3. Zooming in to the combustion chamber, we see the complex time evolution of the |gradient(T)|=15000 isosurface. Click here or on the image to view an animation in MPEG-1 format (780 kB).

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