Picosecond coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) is used to study vibrational energy loading and relaxation kinetics in nitrogen and air ns pulsed non-equilibrium plasmas, in both plane-to-plane and pin-to-pin geometries. In 10 kHz repetitively pulsed plane-to-plane plasmas, up to ∼50% of coupled discharge power is found to load vibrations, in good agreement with a master equation kinetic model. In the pin-to-pin geometry, ∼40% of total discharge energy in a single pulse in air at 100 Torr is found to couple directly to nitrogen vibrations by electron impact, also in good agreement with model predictions. Post-discharge, the total quanta in vibrational levels v = 0–9 is found to increase by ∼60% in air and by a factor of ∼3 in nitrogen, respectively, a result in direct contrast to modelling results which predict the total number of quanta to be essentially constant until ultimately decaying by V–T relaxation and mass diffusion. More detailed comparison between experiment and model show that the vibrational distribution function (VDF) predicted by the model during, and directly after, the discharge pulse is in good agreement with that determined experimentally. However, for time delays exceeding ∼1 µs, the experimental VDF shows populations of vibrational levels v ⩾ 2 greatly exceeding modelling results, which predict their predominant decay due to net downward V–V transfer and corresponding increase in v = 1 population. This is at variance with the experimental results, which show a significant monotonic increase in the populations of levels v = 2–9 at t ∼ 1–10 µs after the discharge pulse, both in nitrogen and air, before gradually switching to relaxation at t ∼ 10–100 µs. It is concluded that a collisional process is likely feeding high vibrational levels at a rate which is comparable to the rate at which population of the high levels is lost due to net downward V–V energy transfer. A likely candidate for the source of additional vibrational quanta is quenching of metastable electronic states of nitrogen to highly excited vibrational levels of the ground electronic state. The effect of electronic-vibrational (E–V) coupling on time-resolved N2 vibrational populations and temperature, estimated using a phenomenological E–V energy transfer model, provides qualitative interpretation of the present experimental results.

Sudden changes of flame shape are an undesired, yet poorly understood feature of swirl combustors used in gas turbines. The present work studies flame shape transition mechanisms of a bistable turbulent swirl flame in a gas turbine model combustor, which alternates intermittently between an attached V-form and a lifted M-form. Time-resolved velocity fields and two-dimensional flame structures were measured simultaneously using high-speed stereo-particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser-induced fluorescence of OH (OH-PLIF) at 10 kHz. The data analysis is performed using two novel methods that are well adapted to the study of transient flame shape transitions: First, the linear stability analysis (LSA) of a time-varying mean flow and second, the recently proposed spectral proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD). The results show that the transitions are governed by two types of instability, namely a hydrodynamic instability in the form of a precessing vortex core (PVC) and a thermoacoustic (TA) instability. The LSA shows that the V-M transition implies the transient formation of a PVC as the result of a self-amplification process. The V-M transition, on the other hand, is induced by the appearance of a TA instability that suppresses the PVC and thereby modifies the flowfield such that the flame re-attaches at the nozzle. In summary, these results provide novel insights into the complex interactions of TA and hydrodynamic instabilities that govern the shape of turbulent swirl-stabilized flames.