Coefficient of Rayleigh Index based performance evaluation of radial micro jet injection technique for thermo-acoustic instability control

•The test setup is unique to study thermo-acoustic instability and its control.•The proposed RI coefficient estimated by simultaneous measurement.•The proposed RI coefficient eliminate problem of arbitrary scale and units.•The proposed RI coefficient (0.5 –0) serves as an indicator of thermo-acoustics. This study proposes a coefficient of Rayleigh Index (CRI) obtained by normalizing the acquired data which can circumvent the problem of arbitrary scale and unit while quantifying the Rayleigh Index. CRI is estimated from the simultaneous measurements of luminescence of a flame as an indicator of unsteady heat release and pressure fluctuation near the burner head. Experiments were carried out for six different mixture equivalence ratios ranging from 0.75 to 1.0 and a burner positioned at x/L = 0.2. The control technique of micro jets is found to completely suppress the thermo-acoustics by decoupling the pressure waves and unsteady heat release waves as indicated by increasing phase difference between them. The coefficient of Rayleigh Index is found to reduce to nearly zero with the use of radial micro jets for suppressing the thermo-acoustic instability. In such case, the flame luminescence was observed to significantly reduce. The proposed coefficient of Rayleigh index is very useful in quantifying the effectiveness of control technique for the thermo-acoustic instability.