Altitude ignition / lean deceleration study

Combustor lean ignition and flame stability limits are prime considerations in the design of advanced turbine engines. The physical processes governing ignition and blowout are well understood qualitatively, but are not easily modeled or predicted. This paper presents ignition and blowout correlations for seven General Electric combustor designs. The purely empirical relations illustrate the lack of consistent trends from one design to the next; the influence of operating parameters cannot be generalized using current information. The empirical approach presented here is useful for analyzing performance of a given combustor design and provides important information regarding trends with operating variables.