Experimental validation studies for large-eddy simulation of a gas turbine main burner

Large-eddy simulation of a gas turbine combustor is a challenging goal. As part of that goal, various aspects of the simulation must be validated against realistic test flows in order to assess the validity of the nal computation. The goal of this work is to provide a combustion platform on which a variety of LES validation flows can be realized. The design of a combustor intended for LES-validation purposes is dened, in part, by the physics being investigated and by the geometric flexibility of the code under development. The experiments discussed here support two LES development eorts. The rst code is intended to address chemistry/turbulence interaction. It is a block-cylindrical, low-Mach-number, single-phase, combustion code (Pierce & Moin 1998a). The second code is intended to address momentum transfer, evapo-ration, and particle dispersion in a spray flame. It is a compressible, curvilinear, two-phase LES combustion code (Oefelein 1997). In each case swirl is used for flame stabilization. Because of the dierent requirements of the two LES eorts, we have developed two separate combustion geometries, one for each code