WELCOME

 

Overview of Research Activities

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

• The Advanced Diagnostics and Propulsion Research Laboratory specializes in the development and application of advanced non-intrusive laser and x-ray based diagnostics to reveal the in-situ physico-chemical behavior of high-speed and reacting flows within extreme aero-thermal systems. 

• This includes applications of advanced diagnostics to rotating detonation engines, combustion, sprays, energetics, hypersonic flows, and non-equilibrium plasmas.

 

 

Scientific Challenges

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• Flows in rotating detonation engines, gas-turbines, rockets, internal combustion engines, scramjets, and multiphase blasts are highly complex and difficult to predict through numerical simulations. 

• 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 advanced diagnostics, therefore, that can resolve a wide range of spatio-temporal scales, interrogate multiple phases, and extract quantitative information about velocity and state variables (temperature, pressure, and density) within such extreme environments.

• Numerical post-processing tools are also needed to extract meaningful information about the dynamics of such systems from large data sets to predict their safe, clean, and efficient operation.