The fact that the Willy Messerschmitt Prize is no longer awarded by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (MW), but by the newly founded Faculty of Aerospace and Geodesy (LRG), does not mean that it is no longer accessible to our doctoral students:
Dr. Frederik Magnus Berger has been awarded this year's Willy Messerschmitt Prize for the best doctorate related to aerospace. The title of his work is:
“High Frequency Transverse Thermoacoustic Instabilities in Swirl and Reheat Combustors”
The thesis deals with feedback phenomena of flame and acoustics in swirl and reheat flames as found in two-stage/sequential gas turbine combustors. The specific focus of the investigations is on high frequency transversal instabilities. In the high frequency range local interaction of the flame with the transverse pressure field is observed. In contrast to longitudinal LF instabilities, the flame can therefore no longer be assumed as compact compared to the acoustic wavelength. This non-compactness of the flame must be taken into account in new prediction methods. In order to study the phenomena occurring in a first combustion stage, a swirl burner was used. For the investigation of the phenomena in the second-stage of sequential gas turbines, a new test bench was designed, constructed and used for first experiments of high-frequency flame dynamics. For the swirl flame it could be shown that the flame is periodically displaced and deformed by the acoustic field. This modulation of the flame shape leads to a driving thermoacoustic feedback. Furthermore, the reheat combustor experiment shows an additional modulation of the reactive shear layer and the auto-igniting flame zone. Especially the modulation of the auto-ignition delay in combination with the flame displacement and deformation is seen as another basic driving mechanism for the occurring high-frequency and transverse instability in the newly developed reheat experiment. Experimental results presented in the thesis confirm theoretically derived driving mechanisms and generated new insight into the nature of high frequency instabilities. These help to improve tools for predicting thermoacoustic interactions in gas turbine combustors. In addition, the reheat experiment provides a framework for further comprehensive investigations of high-frequency, non-compact flame response, which are of particular interest for the development of novel combustion chambers with axial fuel and air staging.
The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros. This is already the second highly endowed prize for Mr. Berger after the Faculty Prize 2020 of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Congratulations to Dr. Berger on the Willy Messerschmitt Promotion Prize 2020.
The list of award winners from the Thermodynamics Institute since 2008 is as follows:
- 2008 Dr.-Ing. Jutta Pieringer
- 2013 Dr.-Ing. Jannis Gikadi
- 2016 Dr.-Ing. Thomas Fiala
- 2018 Dr.-Ing. Vera Hoferichter
- 2019 Dr.-Ing. Tobias Hummel
- 2020 Dr.-Ing. Frederik Berger
Since Dr. Paul Christ is this year's winner of the Manfred Hirschvogel Prize for his dissertation on "Modeling of Automotive HVAC Units Using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition", the best dissertations in both the aerospace and automotive fields come from the Thermodynamics Institute in 2020!