GOALI: Prediction and Mitigation of Undesirable Acoustic Phenomena in Combustors and Power Generation Systems

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This Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project aims at creating methods to improve the safety, performance, and stability of large combustors and power generation systems. A unifying approach will be pursued that can have a significant impact on both the aerospace and power generation industries. For example, understanding and suppressing instabilities that arise in combustors will aid in advancing hybrid combustion technology and its use as a safe and clean propulsion alternative in both space and land applications. This methodology will therefore help in the advancement of large combustors and chemical rockets and thereby advance the country's defense capabilities. The advancement of more stable propulsion concepts will transform our nation's launch infrastructure with drastically reduced costs in space exploration, space tourism, satellite deployment, and weaponry development. The broader impacts include training of several graduate students, offering of specialized courses, broad dissemination of research outcomes, as well as the sharing of first-hand knowledge and experience with industrial partners. Furthermore, the project will enhance STEM education efforts by exposing high school students to modern research concepts in acoustic noise control and rocket propulsion through strategically planned short courses, summer training, technical exchanges, and competitive design challenges.The development of a unified, physics-based, acoustic stability framework for rocket motors will provide a diagnostic tool to quantify the behavior of acoustic oscillations in large combustors. This methodology can also be extended from solid and hybrid motors to liquid rockets, ramjets, preburners, augmenters, and gas turbine engines. With the physics-based framework in hand, it will be possible for future combustors seeking higher performance to be operated more efficiently and closer to their stability limits. The program will seek to obtain more realistic mean and unsteady flow models for solid and hybrid rockets with arbitrary geometric configurations, spatially sensitive grain regression rate equations for hybrids, and a triglobal stability formulation to capture the amplified acoustic oscillations and pressure jumps. It will also lead to the training of several graduate and undergraduate students, a technical guide for building safer and more stable rockets, and two modern courses on aeroacoustics and hybrid rocketry. Finally, partnership with the industrial sponsor, the Space Propulsion Group, will benefit the development of the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which is presently under development by NASA.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.