Le but principal du présent travail est ainsi de réaliser une expérience de mélange par la turbulence, dans laquelle il est possible de déterminer et de quantifier les temps de cohérence des différentes échelles spatiales des fluctuations du champ de vitesse et du champ de concentration qu'il transporte et mélange. La turbulence est ici voisine de la situation idéale statistiquement homogène et isotrope, et la configuration est conçue pour qu'il en soit de même pour le champ de concentration. La turbulence est créée par une grille placée perpendiculairement à un écoulement uniforme à l'extérieur des couches limites qui se développent le long des parois de la veine d'essais à section carrée constante. L'écoulement de la présente étude est un écoulement d'eau, dans lequel le champ de concentration est celui d'une solution de Rhodamine B injectée au niveau de la grille à travers des injecteurs équi-répartis le long des barreaux de celle-ci. Ce choix, dicté par la technique de mesure du champ de concentration par Fluorescence Induite par Laser, permet en outre de mesurer le champ de vitesse par une autre technique optique, elle aussi non-intrusive. Pour se rapprocher le plus de la théorie d'un mélange idéal statistiquement homogène et isotrope sans vitesse moyenne, on considère dans l'expérience, conformément à l'hypothèse de Taylor, que toutes les échelles associées à chacun de ces champs, sont convectés à la vitesse moyenne U de l'écoulement, et l'on suit une "boîte de turbulence" qui se déplace à cette vitesse le long de la veine. Par suite déterminer l'état de la turbulence en un point donné de cette boite à l'instant t et à l'instant t'=t+dt, revient à l'étudier dans l'expérience à t à l'abscisse x de la veine d'essai, et à t' à l'abscisse x+dx , avec dx=Udt, où se trouve le point de la boîte aux deux instants successifs. Les résultats expérimentaux concernant les échelles pour lesquelles l'isotropie statistique est satisfaite, permettent alors de vérifier une phénoménologie de l'évolution de la cohérence temporelle des diverses échelles spatiales du champ des fluctuations de concentration fondée sur les idées de Comte-Bellot et Corrsin. Cette expérience, est en outre l'occasion de donner des résultats sur les densités de probabilité de diverses propriétés statistiques des champs de fluctuation de vitesse. / The main purpose of this work is to make an experiment of mixing by turbulence, in which it is possible to determine and quantify the coherence time of the different spatial scales of fluctuations of a scalar field. We measure concentration fluctuations of rhodamine B by Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) which is transported and mixed by velocity fluctuations. These latter ones are generated by a grid placed perpendicularly to the flow in a water channel and are measured by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The concentration field is injected in the flow by injectors regularly spaced on the grid so that it is a situation where both the velocity and the concentration fields are statistically homogeneous and isotropic. To get as close as the theory of statistically homogeneous and isotropic turbulence with no mean velocity, we consider, according to Taylor's hypothesis, that all scales associated with each of these fields are convected with the mean velocity U of the flow, and we follow a "turbulent box" that moves at U along the channel. As a result determining the state of turbulence at a given point of the box at time t and time t ' = t + dt, is like studying in the experiment at time t and space x of test section, and time t' and space x + dx of the test section, with dx = U dt. When statistical isotropy is satisfied, we can verify a phenomenology of the evolution of the temporal coherence of various space scales of the concentration fluctuation fields based on the ideas of Comte-Bellot and Corrsin. This experiment is also an opportunity to give results on probability densities of various statistical properties of fluctuating velocity fields.

Syngas consisting mainly of a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other diluents, is an important fuel for power generation applications since it can be obtained from both biomass and coal gasification. Clean coal technologies require stable and efficient operation of syngas-fired gas turbines. The trapped vortex combustor (TVC) is a relatively new gas turbine combustor concept which shows tremendous potential in achieving stable combustion under wide operating conditions with low emissions. In the present work, combustion of low calorific value syngas in a TVC has been studied using in-situ laser diagnostic techniques and numerical modeling. Specifically, this work reports in-situ measurements of mixture fraction, OH radical concentration and velocity in a single cavity TVC, using state-of-the art laser diagnostic techniques such as Planar Laser-induced Fluorescence (PLIF) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Numerical simulations using the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approaches have also been carried out to complement the experimental measurements. The fuel-air momentum flux ratio (MFR), where the air momentum corresponds to that entering the cavity through a specially-incorporated flow guide vane, is used to characterize the mixing. Acetone PLIF experiments show that at high MFRs, the fuel-air mixing in the cavity is very minimal and is enhanced as the MFR reduces, due to a favourable vortex formation in the cavity, which is corroborated by PIV measurements. Reacting flow PIV measurements which differ substantially from the non-reacting cases primarily because of the gas expansion due to heat release show that the vortex is displaced from the centre of the cavity towards the guide vane. The MFR was hence identified as the controlling parameter for mixing in the cavity. Quantitative OH concentration contours showed that at higher MFRs 4.5, the fuel jet and the air jet stream are separated and a flame front is formed at the interface. As the MFR is lowered to 0.3, the fuel air mixing increases and a flame front is formed at the bottom and downstream edge of the cavity where a stratified charge is present. A flame stabilization mechanism has been proposed which accounts for the wide MFRs and premixing in the mainstream as well. LES simulations using a flamelet-based combustion model were conducted to predict mean OH radical concentration and velocity along with URANS simulations using a modified Eddy dissipation concept model. The LES predictions were observed to agree closely with experimental data, and were clearly superior to the URANS predictions as expected. Performance characteristics in the form of exhaust temperature pattern factor and pollutant emissions were also measured. The NOx emissions were found to be less than 2 ppm, CO emissions below 0.2% and HC emissions below 700 ppm across various conditions. Overall, the in-situ experimental data coupled with insight from simulations and the exhaust measurements have confirmed the advantages of using the TVC as a gas turbine combustor and provided guidelines for stable and efficient operation of the combustor with syngas fuel.