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A furnace or boiler designed to run smoothly on natural gas can become unstable when operating on hydrogen, which burns very differently. This can trigger a hidden and destructive problem: a powerful, self-sustaining oscillation that feeds on the flame's own fluctuating heat. If left uncontrolled, these oscillations can reduce combustion efficiency or even cause catastrophic mechanical damage, leading to costly shutdowns and major safety risks. To prevent this, engineers use computer models to predict dangerous oscillations and vibrations before a plant is built. Yet existing design tools are often blind to the real physics of today鈥檚 large industrial systems. A joint project between Eindhoven University of Technology (黑料福利网) and the University of Twente (UT) with acronym 鈥淒YNAF鈥� was initiated to develop predictive and validated tools for thermoacoustic oscillations and the induced vibration. This project is sponsored by NWO, Dutch boiler manufacturers and users. Dario Passato鈥檚 research within this project contributes to a new generation of predictive tools intended to address the structural vibrations. The tools were validated by laboratory tests at the UT.

Fluid-Structure Interaction

Current design tools treat enormous, complex furnaces as if they were simple hollow tubes. In reality, sound waves do not merely travel back and forth in these furnaces; they bounce and swirl in three dimensions, creating complex patterns. Simple one-dimensional models miss this entirely. Moreover, these models assume the thick steel walls of the furnace are perfectly rigid. In practice, acoustic fluctuations can be so powerful that they make these walls vibrate. This coupling between sound waves and the flexible structure, a process called Fluid-Structure Interaction, can feed back into the flame and dramatically alter the system's stability in ways the existent models can鈥檛 capture. This knowledge gap forces engineers to rely on costly and slow trial-and-error fixes after the plant is already built.

Wave-based method

Conventional high-fidelity simulations must account for the entire coupled acoustic and structural system, often by dividing it into millions of elements to be solved. This process is computationally prohibitive for design. The wave-based method developed by Passato is far more efficient. It simplifies this enormous problem by focusing only on the essential information: the waves of sound and vibration that actually propagate through the system. This approach allows the model to capture complex three-dimensional acoustic patterns while systematically including the effect of the vibrating, flexible walls. By projecting the physics onto a small, relevant set of these key wave patterns, the method drastically reduces the computational size of the problem, making it tractable.

Fast and accurate tool for engineers

This gain in efficiency makes the analysis of complex industrial systems computationally feasible, offering engineers a fast and accurate tool. It enables them to test numerous design variations digitally, supporting the optimization of furnaces that are stable, safe, and ready for the clean fuels of the future. Ultimately, this research helps to overcome a key engineering barrier to the widespread adoption of hydrogen. By developing better methods to predict and eliminate destructive oscillations from the start, it contributes to a safer and more reliable energy transition.

Title of PhD thesis: . Supervisors: Prof. Ines Lopez Arteaga, Jim Kok (University of Twente) and Danilo Beli.