Combustion characteristics in a hydrogen fuelled single-element lean direct injection (LDI) combustor for low emission gas turbine engine are computationally investigated. A single element LDI combustor was produced and simulated with steady-state Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes reacting computations. Reacting computations of the single-element LDI combustor were performed with an augmented reduced 23-step reaction mechanism for hydrogen/air. A realizable k - epsilon model was used to obtain turbulence closure. For the single-element LDI combustor with different equivalence ratio, the effective area, axial velocity, total pressure drop coefficient, total temperature, mass fraction of OH, emission index of pollutant NO (EINO) were achieved and discussed. (C) 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.