Effect of cavity-injector/radial-strut relative position on performance of a trapped vortex combustor

Previous works have put forward the key role of radial strut in a trapped vortex combustor (TVC), however, few researches focusing on radial strut can be found in the existing literature so far. The present study is carried out to investigate the effect of the cavity-injector/radial-strut relative position on the performance of a trapped vortex combustor. This effect is directly explored by TVC combustion experiments that are run at atmospheric pressure using RP-3 liquid aircraft fuel. The specific positions include: the inline arrangement, the intermediate arrangement and the staggered arrangement. The staggered arrangement shows remarkable advantages in terms of ignition, lean blow out (LBO) and combustor temperature rise, whereas the inline arrangement performs rather poorly. Numerical simulations with validated methodology of non-reacting flows are then conducted for the purpose to explain the experimental results. The good performance of the staggered arrangement is mainly attributed to the counter-rotating streamwise vortex pair, the high turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dissipation rate.