• Dr. Matthew Oehlschlaeger
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • 113 McBryde Hall
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Lin Ma

 

Gas-phase autoignition, the topic of the first half of this seminar, and its underlying reaction kinetics are of fundamental importance to the operation of combustion-based aero-propulsion engines, particularly in advanced engine concepts where kinetics is of greater importance than in legacy designs. The increasing significance of kinetics in modern engine operation and the rapid development of alternative fuels from biomass and other sources motivates a science-based understanding of reaction kinetics and in particular the influence of fuel structure and composition on oxidation and autoignition. The results of shock tube autoignition studies for low volatility conventional and alternative aviation fuels and components under wide-ranging conditions will be discussed. These studies provide: 1) fundamental information about the structure-reactivity relationships for fuels, 2) targets for the development of fuel oxidation kinetic models, 3) assessment of simplified surrogate mixtures designed to mimic the behavior of real fuels and the methodologies used for their formulation, and 4) information that can be used in the design and development of combustors.

In the second half of the seminar exploratory efforts to use the photoignition of nanomaterials dispersed in fuel/oxidizer mixtures to manipulate ignition and combustion wave propagation will be presented. Initial results show that photoignition can be used to achieve quasi-homogenous ignition of gaseous fuel/air/nanomaterial mixtures and reduce flame acceleration and deflagration-to-detonation time and length scales by around a factor of two.