  Thermoacoustic instabilities in gas turbines and aeroengine combustors falls
within the category of complex systems. They can be described
phenomenologically using nonlinear stochastic differential equations, which
constitute the grounds for output-only model-based system identification. It
has been shown recently that one can extract the governing parameters of the
instabilities, namely the linear growth rate and the nonlinear component of the
thermoacoustic feedback, using dynamic pressure time series only. This is
highly relevant for practical systems, which cannot be actively controlled due
to a lack of cost-effective actuators. The thermoacoustic stability is given by
the linear growth rate, which results from the combination of the acoustic
damping and the coherent feedback from the flame. In this paper, it is shown
that it is possible to quantify the acoustic damping of the system, and thus to
separate its contribution to the linear growth rate from the one of the flame.
This is achieved by post-processing in a simple way simultaneously acquired
chemiluminescence and acoustic pressure data. It provides an additional
approach to further unravel from observed time series the key mechanisms
governing the system dynamics. This straightforward method is illustrated here
using experimental data from a combustion chamber operated at several linearly
stable and unstable operating conditions.
