Events Calendar

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar

Speaker: Carlos Pantano, Professor/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Talk Title: Flame Hole Dynamics Applied to the Modeling of Turbulent Nonpremixed Combustion

Abstract: Turbulent diffusion flames can be quenched in regions of high strain owing to increased heat loss away from the reaction zone. These chemically inert regions are sometimes called flame holes (Dold et al. 1991). Turbulent flames with extinction are relevant in modern combustors where the flame temperature is kept low to reduce pollutant formation or in lifted jet flames used for thermal protection of the burner liner. Modeling the dynamical behavior of flame holes, without incorporating a detailed chemical-transport description, requires new numerical methods that describe the evolution in time of the flame boundary (or rim) on the moving stoichiometric surface. The kinematics of the flame rim is normally approximated as that of a two-dimensional edge flame whose speed of propagation is controlled by the local strain conditions. The computational challenge is the efficient numerical evolution of the flame rim using a state field defined on a two-manifold (of varying shape, and possibly multiply connected). In this talk, I will describe recent progress on the numerical and physical modeling of flame holes as it applies to turbulent nonpremixed flames with extinction. Special emphasis is made to achieve high-order of accuracy, flexibility, and robustness, while maintaining relatively low computational cost.

Biography: Carlos Pantano received his Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering with specialization in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sevilla in Spain. He received a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Centrale Paris in France, and a Masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California San Diego. He held a Senior Postdoctoral position in Engineering from 2000 to 2001 at the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales in France and then moved to the California Institute of Technology as a senior post-doctoral associate and later as a senior research scientist until 2006. Currently, he holds the rank of Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Illinois. Professor Pantano received the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineering (PECASE) in 2006. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and member of American Physical Society (APS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the Combustion Institute.

Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Ashleen Knutsen