An investigation of flame features and oscillation characteristics in near-blowout swirl-stabilized flames using high-speed OH-PLIF and mode decomposition methods

Flame features and dynamics are important to the explanation and prediction of a lean blowout (LBO) phenomenon. In this paper, recognition of near-LBO flame features and oscillation characterization methods were proposed based on flame spectroscopic images. High-speed planar laser-induced fluorescence measurements of OH were used to capture unique dynamic features such as the local extinction and reignition feature and entrained reactant pockets. The Zernike moment demonstrated a good performance in recognition of stability and near-LBO conditions, though the geometric moment had more advantages to characterize frequency characteristics. Low-frequency oscillations, especially at the obvious self-excited oscillation frequency around 200 Hz, were found when approaching an LBO condition, which can be expected to be used as a novel prediction characteristic parameter of the flameout limit. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) were used to conduct dynamic analysis of near-LBO flames. POD modes spectra showed the unique frequency characteristics of stable and near-LBO flames, which were basically in line with those at the heat-release frequency. The primary POD modes demonstrated that the radial vibration mode dominated in a stable flame, while the rotation mode was found to exist in a near-LBO flame. Analysis of modal decomposition showed that flame shedding and agminated entrained reactant pockets were responsible for generating self-excited flame oscillations.