WELCOME

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Overview of Research Activities

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• Next-generation propulsion, power, and energetic systems require a detailed understanding of highly dynamic, multi-phase, reacting, high-speed, and non-equilibrium flows over a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

• The Advanced Diagnostics and Propulsion Technologies Laboratory specializes in the detailed study of these complex thermal-fluid transport phenomena in rotating detonation engines, gas-turbines, afterburners, rockets, scramjets, ramjets, IC engines, post-detonation blast fields, and hypersonic flows.

• These studies enable scientists and engineers to elucidate and optimize the key parameters that affect the stability, performance, cost, and emissions of new state-of-the-art propulsion, power, and energetic technologies for commercial and defense systems.

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Scientific Challenges

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• The in-situ physico-chemical behavior within extreme aero-thermal systems is highly complex and difficult to predict solely using analytical or numerical methods.

• Such flows are characterized by widely varying levels of turbulence, chemical reactions, temperatures, and pressures within optically challenging environments, including particulates, droplets, high pressures, and shock-wave interactions.

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Research Needs

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• Understanding and predicting the performance of next-generation devices requires lab-scale test facilities that allow advanced diagnostics and instrumentation within relevant flow conditions.

• These diagnostics must be capable of resolving a wide range of spatio-temporal scales, interrogate multiple phases, and extract quantitative information about highly coupled state variables within such extreme environments.

• Advanced data analytics and post-processing methodologies are also needed to extract meaningful information about the multi-dimensional, highly transient dynamics of such systems.

• The information gained must then be used to develop novel device architectures that can be field tested and transitioned to the marketplace.