The effects of magnitude saturation of fuel modulation actuators are analyzed via linear and nonlinear analysis on a reduced order model describing combustion instabilities. The control law is linear pressure feedback with a control delay. The objective of linear design is to enlarge the region of linear stability in the parameter space. Local nonlinear design focuses on changing the criticality of Hopf bifurcations near the stability boundary, and global nonlinear design is to reduce the limit cycle amplitude away from the stability boundary. Simple formulas for calculating the limit cycle amplitude are obtained.
Numerical computations show that the formulas give good estimation of the limit cycle amplitude.