Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center

Lecturer: Prof. Moshe Matalon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Course Length: 15 hours (Mon – Fri)

Objective: The aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the basic principles of combustion processes, how they relate to experimental observations and how they can be used in theoretical and numerical modeling. The subject is presented in a systematic way emphasizing, in particular, the mathematical character of the various combustion problems and the advances that took place in recent years. The first four lectures cover the fundamentals of chemically reacting flows, general conservation equations and various classifications of combustion processes. One lecture is allocated to detonation waves and the remaining lectures focus on low-speed combustion, or flames. Four lectures are devoted to premixed combustion, and include the structure of a planar premixed flame and the determination of the laminar flame speed, hydrodynamic effects, stretched flames, and ignition and extinction phenomena. Three lectures are devoted to non-premixed combustion and cover the structure of a diffusion flame, the mixture fraction formulation, flame lift-off and edge flames, the burning of condensed fuels and spray combustion. The remaining three lectures are devoted to flame instability, hydrodynamic and thermo-diffusive, and to turbulence covering in particular the various regimes of turbulent combustion and the notion of the turbulent burning velocity.

Lecturer: Prof. Michael J. Pilling, Unversity of Leeds
Course Length: 15 hours (Mon – Fri)

Objective: The aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of how rate coefficients and products of elementary reactions of importance in combustion are determined experimentally, how they are used in conjunction with theoretical models and how they are incorporated in chemical mechanisms for use in combustion models. Determination of the thermodynamic properties for radical species will also be discussed. The course will be illustrated by a number of examples of relevance to high and low temperature hydrocarbon oxidation and NOx formation and control; with a discussion on the impact of combustion emissions on climate change and air quality.

Lecturer: Prof. Ronald K. Hanson, Stanford University
Course Length: 15 hours (Mon – Fri)

Objective: Fundamentals of laser absorption and laser-induced fluorescence in gases, including molecular spectroscopy and photophysics.   Basics of   shock tubes as a primary tool for studying combustion chemistry, including recent advances.   Example state-of-the-art applications of species-specific sensing for shock tube kinetics studies, and multi-parameter sensing in different types of propulsion flows and engines.

Lecturer: Dr. Thierry Poinsot, Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, CNRS
Course Length: 15 hours (Mon – Fri)

Objective: This course will enable engineers and research specialists with knowledge of fluid mechanics to move to an integrated understanding of numerical combustion especially in the field of unsteady turbulent combustion. It will present basic techniques and recent progress in numerical combustion while establishing important connections with the underlying combustion basics. The course will include RANS, LES, and DNS modeling but also numerical methods adapted to these models. It will present and explore multiple examples of turbulent combustion and combustion instabilities in real combustors.