Analysis of self-excited combustion instabilities using decomposition techniques
Proper orthogonal decomposition and dynamic mode decomposition are evaluated for the study of self-excited longitudinal combustion instabilities in laboratory-scaled single-element gas turbine and rocket combustors. Since each proper orthogonal decomposition mode comprises multiple frequencies, specific modes of the pressure and heat release are not related, which makes the analysis more qualitative and less efficient for identifying physical mechanisms. On the other hand, dynamic mode decomposition analysis generates a global frequency spectrum in which each mode corresponds to a specific discrete frequency so that different dynamics can be correlated. In addition, proper orthogonal decomposition results are found to be inaccurate when only a limited amount of spatial information is provided in contrast with dynamic mode decomposition results, which provide more reliable results. Overall, dynamic mode decomposition analysis proves to be a robust and systematic method that can give consistent interpretati...