Since its introduction in the late 19th century, symmetry breaking has been found to play a crucial role in physics. In particular, it appears as one key phenomenon controlling hydrodynamic and acoustic instabilities in problems with rotational symmetries. A previous paper investigated its desired potential application to the control of circumferential thermoacoustic modes in one annular cavity coupled with multiple flames (Bauerheim et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 760, 2014, pp. 431–465). The present paper focuses on a similar problem when symmetry breaking appears unintentionally, for example when uncertainties due to tolerances are taken into account. It yields a large uncertainty quantification (UQ) problem containing numerous uncertain parameters. To tackle this well-known ‘curse of dimensionality’, a novel UQ methodology is used. It relies on the active subspace approach to construct a reduced set of input variables. This strategy is applied on two annular cavities coupled by 19 flames to determine its modal risk factor, i.e. the probability of an azimuthal acoustic mode being unstable. Since each flame is modelled by two uncertain parameters, it leads to a large UQ problem involving 38 parameters. An acoustic network model is then derived, which yields a nonlinear dispersion relation for azimuthal modes. This nonlinear problem, subject to bifurcations, is solved quasi-analytically. Results show that the dimension of the probabilistic problem can be drastically reduced, from 38 uncertain parameters to only 3. Moreover, it is found that the three active variables are related to physical quantities, which unveils underlying phenomena controlling the stability of the two coupled cavities. The first active variable is associated with a coupling strength controlling the bifurcation of the system, while the two others correspond to a symmetry-breaking effect induced by the uncertainties. Thus, an additional destabilization effect appear caused by the non-uniform pattern of the uncertainty distribution, which breaks the initial rotating symmetry of the annular cavities. Finally, the active subspace is exploited by fitting the response surface with polynomials (linear, quadratic and cubic). By comparing accuracy and cost, results prove that 5 % error can be achieved with only 30 simulations on the reduced space, whereas 2000 are required on the complete initial space. It exemplifies that this novel UQ technique can accurately predict the risk factor of an annular configuration at low cost as well as unveil key parameters controlling the stability.
Combustion instabilities can develop in modern gas-turbines as large amplitude pressure oscillations coupled with heat release fluctuations. In extreme cases, they lead to irreversible damage which can destroy the combustor. Prediction and control of all acoustic modes of the configuration at the design stage are therefore required to avoid these instabilities. This is a challenging task because of the large number of parameters involved. This situation becomes even more complex when considering uncertainties of the underlying models and input parameters. The forward uncertainty quantification problem is addressed in the case of a single swirled burner combustor. First, a Helmholtz solver is used to analyze the thermoacoustic modes of the combustion chamber. The Flame Transfer Function measured experimentally is used as a flame model for the Helmholtz solver. Then, the frequency of oscillation and the growth rate of the first thermoacoustic mode are computed in 24 different operating points. Comparisons between experimental and numerical results show good agreements except for modes which are marginally stable/unstable. The main reason is that the uncertainties can arbitrary change the nature of these modes (stable vs unstable); in other words, the usual mode classification stable/unstable must be replaced by a more continuous description such as the risk factor, i.e. the probability for a mode to be unstable given the uncertainties on the input parameters. To do so, a Monte Carlo analysis is performed using 4000 Helmholtz simulations of a single experimental operating point but with random perturbations on the FTF parameters. This allows the computation of the risk factor associated to this acoustic mode. Finally, the analysis of the Monte Carlo database suggests that a reduced two-step UQ strategy may be efficient to deal with thermoacoustics in such a system. First, two bilinear surrogate models are tuned from a moderate number of Helmholtz solutions (a few tens). Then, these algebraic models are used to perform a Monte Carlo analysis at reduced cost and approximate the risk factor of the mode. The accuracy and efficiency of this reduced UQ strategy are assessed by comparing the reference risk factor given by the full Monte Carlo database and the approximate risk factor obtained by the surrogate models. It shows a good agreement which proves that reduced efficient methods can be used to predict unstable modes.
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