Change of criticality in a prototypical thermoacoustic system

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the existence of the phenomenon of change of criticality in a horizontal Rijke tube, a prototypical thermoacoustic system. In the experiments, the phenomenon is shown to occur as the criticality of the Hopf bifurcation changes with varying air flow rates in the system. The dynamics of a nonlinear system exhibiting Hopf bifurcation can be described using a Stuart-Landau equation (SLE) in the vicinity of the bifurcation point. The criticality of Hopf bifurcations can be determined by the Landau constant of the Stuart-Landau equation, which represents the effect of nonlinearities in the system. We propose an SLE to model the bifurcations seen in the horizontal Rijke tube. We identify a rescaled version of Strouhal number as the Landau constant, which determines the criticality of the bifurcation in the present study.