Vibration reduction in a combustion chamber

Abstract

A combustion chamber according to the invention has a number b0 of annularly arranged burners, of which a number k of modulatable burners have means for modulating a fuel mass flow, k being k<b0, and the modulatable burners being arranged in such a way that between every pair of adjacent modulatable burners are arranged in each case a1, a2, . . . ak nonmodulatable burners, and that the values a1+1, a2+1, . . . , ak+1 are not integral divisors of b0. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, a highest value of LCM(b0, a1+1), LCM(b0, a2+1), . . . LCM(b0, ak+1) is maximum, LCM designating the lowest common multiple. It thereby becomes possible to damp a maximum number of azimuthal vibration modes of the combustion chamber by means of a minimum number of modulatable burners. Each pair of modulatable burners gives rise to at least one undesirable vibration or instability which, however, is damped by the other modulatable burner or burners arranged according to the invention.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.