Simulation of gas flow field of an air blast swirler fuel injector with LES and comparison with experiments

The gas flow field of an air blast type of oil fuel injector for the ABB GT10 gasturbine was investigated by experiments (PIV and LDV) and LES simulations at cold and atmospheric conditions. Misplaced droplets are suspected to create problems with coking and burn damages in the burner. The purpose of this work was to enhance the understanding of the flow field from the injector and to create a basis for further experimental and computational investigation of the gas flow field and trajectories of fuel droplets. LES results for several inflow conditions have been computed. Experimental data include both PIV, instantanious and time mean velocity field. At selected positions a continous velocity component was measured by LDV. Due to difficulties in imposing similar inflow boundary conditions in the experimental and the LES set up, so far only qualitative comparisons have been done.