A Reinforcement-Learning-Augmented Liquid-Fueled Reactor Network Model for Predicting Lean Blowout in Gas Turbine Combustors

Philip John; Eloghosa Ikponmwoba; Pinaki Pal; Opeoluwa Owoyele

cs.LGJul 21, 2026

A Reinforcement-Learning-Augmented Liquid-Fueled Reactor Network Model for Predicting Lean Blowout in Gas Turbine Combustors

Authors: Philip John, Eloghosa Ikponmwoba, Pinaki Pal, Opeoluwa Owoyele

Organizations: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA · 2Transportation and Power Systems Division Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA

Abstract

This study introduces a reinforcement learning (RL) framework for generating optimal liquid-fueled reactors to improve lean blowout (LBO) predictions in gas turbine combustors. Existing approaches for determining cluster boundaries rely on manual heuristics or distance-based metrics in the input space. In contrast, the proposed method is goal-oriented, explicitly accounting for the target metric (e.g., LBO prediction accuracy) during cluster formation. The framework employs a multi-stage clustering--classification strategy: an initial clustering step (e.g., $k$ -means clustering) generates a large set of homogeneous micro-clusters, followed by an actor-critic RL agent that merges them into optimal reactor zones. The validation study, performed using a Jet-A mechanism (119 species, 841 reactions), shows the RL framework offers improved predictive fidelity compared to $k$ -means and captures the correct LBO trends, while achieving substantial speedups relative to the high-fidelity computational model. Overall, the RL-driven approach demonstrates strong potential as a computationally efficient reduced-order modeling technique that can complement high-fidelity simulations for rapid design-space exploration.

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Jun 1, 2026 · physics.comp-phJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Machine Learning-Driven Chemical Reactor Network Modeling of the Sandia-D Flame

Nicolas J. Tricard, Benjamin C. Koenig, Sili Deng

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Turbulent combustion simulations are crucial for many scientific and engineering systems. However, the high cost to fully resolve the complex multiscale and multiphysics behavior makes direct simulation typically infeasible. The equivalent reactor network (ERN) approach attempts to improve computational efficiency by replacing a multidimensional turbulent simulation with a series of much cheaper 0-D and 1-D chemical reactors, providing a surrogate model that retains detailed chemistry at the cost of simplified flow physics. However, their development remains a challenge, often requiring either expert analysis, or automated approaches that sacrifice accuracy. In this work, we develop an automated machine-learning-assisted framework for constructing ERNs of the Sandia-D turbulent methane/air flame. Principal component analysis is first used to reduce high-dimensional thermochemical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data to a low-dimensional latent space, where k-means clustering identifies physically interpretable flame regions used to initialize a reactor-network graph. This initialization is then refined using finite-difference gradient descent wrapped around non-differentiable Cantera reactor simulations. Across 30 RANS simulations spanning a range of pilot temperatures and inlet methane compositions, the optimized 7-reactor ERN achieves a maximum-temperature

R^2

score of 0.7945 while preserving a

\sim6000\times

speedup over the CFD solver. Outlet CO prediction remains more challenging, with a final

R^2

score of

-0.4183

, but improves substantially from the unoptimized clustering initialization. These results show that unsupervised thermochemical feature extraction can provide effective physics-informed initializations for ERN construction, while gradient-based refinement can significantly improve predictive accuracy without manual reactor-network design.

Combustion Control Chemical Process Systems Computational Fluid Dynamic Flames Nuclear Fusion

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Abstract

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