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Prediction of combustion instability is essential in reducing development costs of large scale rocket engines. Recently, high fidelity CFD models have shown some ability to represent the stability characteristics of sub-scale experimental combustors. A challenge remains in acquiring experimental measurements of critical combusting flow properties, especially measurements of the unsteady heat addition field, for comparison to models. The chemiluminescent emission of radicals OH* and CH*, although commonly employed, may fall short due to its known dependence on pressure, strain rate, equivalence ratio, and turbulence level. Since these flame properties have large variations in an unstable rocket combustor, it is difficult to decouple the emission from all other variables except the heat release. Computations capture the local variations, and therefore can be used for a direct comparison with the measurements. The present study investigates the relationship between chemiluminescent species and heat release rate of the flame using simulations that employ detailed kinetics including the emitting species. This relationship is then compared to experimental spectral measurements captured with a fiber optic probe to check the validity of the model and to provide insight on the ability of the chemiluminescent light emission to indicate heat release in a high pressure unstable flame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rocket engine combustors are prone to transverse instabilities that are characterized by large amplitude high frequency oscillations in the acoustic pressure and the heat release rate. In this work, we study the coupled interaction between the acoustic pressure and the CH* intensity (representative of heat release rate) oscillations in a 2D multi-element self-excited model rocket combustor during the transition from a stable state to thermoacoustic instability through intermittency. We show the emergence of synchronization between these oscillations from desynchronization through intermittent phase synchronization during the onset of thermoacoustic instability. We find substantial evidence that the intensities of the jet flames close to the end wall is higher than that observed near the center of the combustor as a result of its strong coupling to the local acoustic field. Using concepts from recurrence theory, we distinguish the type of synchronization between the acoustic pressure and the CH* intensity oscillations at the end wall and the center of the combustor during thermoacoustic instability. Analyzing the local CH* intensity oscillations, we observe that the longitudinally propagating jet flames experience substantial transverse displacement with flame merging effects during thermoacoustic instability. Furthermore, we differentiate the interaction of the jet flames with the shock wave during intermittency and thermoacoustic instability at both the end wall and the center of the combustor. We also discerned the change from stochastic to deterministic nature in the local CH* intensity oscillations during the transition to thermoacoustic instability. Our results demonstrate that only the first few transverse modes contribute to the generation of acoustic power from the reacting flow, in spite of the pressure oscillations featuring several harmonics. The insights gained from such coupled analysis during the transition from stable state to thermoacoustic instability can be leveraged to aid modeling efforts of thermoacoustic instability in rocket engines with multiple injectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]