Guide :Dr. Balaji Srinivasan
Year of Joining: 2015
Research Topic: Fiber optic sensors for predicting combustion instability in gas turbines
Position: PhD

• Completed B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering at College of Engineering, Chengannur, Kerala in 2010.
• Completed M.Tech in Optoelectronics and Laser Technology at International School of Photonics, CUSAT, Kerala in 2012.

Combustion instability poses a key limitation on the performance and structural durability of both land-based and aircraft gas turbine engines. As such, detection of the onset of combustion instability is not only critical for performance monitoring and fault diagnosis, but also for initiating efficient decision and control of such engines. Recently, a dynamic data driven method based on symbolic time series analysis (STSA) approach built upon the generalized D-Markov machine has been proposed for detecting early onset of thermo-acoustic instability in swirl-stabilized combustors. This approach models spatio-temporal co-dependence among time series from heterogeneous (e.g. pressure and chemi-luminescence) sensors to generate a robust data-driven precursor which is uniformly applicable across multiple experiment protocols with various premixing levels.
In order to experimentally validate the above approach, we propose a method wherein a fiber optic bundle can be used as the chemi-luminescence sensor to visualize the flame and fiber Bragg gratings can be used to monitor the acoustic emission inside the combustor. Since the combustion instability is a result of coupling between heat release and acoustics of the combustion chamber, the proposed sensor solution can give more robust and accurate results.

1. Suma H, Joel Vasanth, B. Srinivasan, S. R. Chakravarthy, “Detecting Onset of Combustion Instability in Gas Turbines Through Flame Visualisation using Fiber Optic Bundle” in 8th International Symposium on NDT in Aerospace, Bangalore, 3-5 November 2016.
2. Suma H, Joel Vasanth, S. R. Chakravarthy and B. Srinivasan, “Fiber Optic Chemi-Luminescence Sensor to Predict Onset of Combustion Instability in Gas Turbines” in Photonics 2018, New Delhi, 12-15 December 2018.
3. Suma H, P. Pankaj, S. R. Chakravarthy and B.Srinivasan,“Predicting Onset of Combustion Instability in Gas Turbines using Fiber Bragg Grating Pressure Sensors” in ICOL 2019, Dehradun, 19-22 October 2019.