Identification of heat transfer dynamics for non-modal analysis of thermoacoustic stability

A systematic approach for non-modal stability analysis of thermoacoustic systems with a localized heat source is proposed. The response of the heat source to flow perturbations is obtained from unsteady computational fluid dynamics combined with correlation-based linear system identification. A model for the complete thermoacoustic system is formulated with a Galerkin expansion technique, where the heat source is included as an acoustically compact element. The eigenvalues of the resulting system are obtained from discretization of the solution operator, the maximum growth factor is estimated from the pseudospectra using Kreiss' theorem. The approach is illustrated with a simple Rijke tube configuration. Results obtained with a simple "baseline" model for the heat source dynamics based on King's law - widely used in hot wire anemometry - are compared against the more advanced treatment developed here. Analysis of pseudospectra diagrams shows that the choice of the heat source model does influence the sensitivity of eigenvalues to perturbations and hence the non-normal behavior. The maximum growth factor for the system with the heat source model based on King's law is more sensitive to changes in the heat source location than the CFD-based heat source model.