Optical Characterization of Fuel Injection in a Flame Tube Combustor Using a GE TAPS Injector Configuration

This paper presents results in which we compare fuel staging and its effect on fuel spray pattern, velocity and speciation during combustion for several inlet conditions using a GE TAPS injector configuration. Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF), particle image velocimetry (PIV) and phase Doppler interferometry (PDI) were used to investigate spray patterns and velocity. The 2D PIV provides slices in the flow of axial-vertical or axial horizontal velocity components. With 3D PDI, we obtained 3 components of velocity, and fuel drop sizes. Chemiluminescence imaging and spontaneous Raman scattering (SRS) were used to investigate flame structure, species location and relative species concentration. Phase Doppler and PIV data were acquired using scatter from fuel droplets; therefore, those data were obtained only at the pilot-only test points. Raman measurements were acquired only at 10/90 split points to avoid droplets.