Researchers from Imperial College London and UCL won a joint grant for their research on thermoacoustic instability.

EPSRC awarded the £757k grant to the CHAMBER project, led by Dr Aimee Morgans from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial, and Dr Ramanarayanan Balachandran, from UCL’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The project will begin in early 2017, and involves collaboration with leading researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and with Siemens.

Thermoacoustic instability in the combustors of aeroplane engines and power gas turbines can lead to large, damaging oscillations. Unfortunately, it tends to occur under the same conditions that allow for low NOx emissions, so improved methods for ‘designing it out’ are urgently needed to ensure future improvements in air quality.

The proposed work will develop advanced tools for predicting thermoacoustic instability and provide new insights into factors that affect it. It will contribute to the technologies needed for the low NOx and instability-free combustors of the future.