Computational Turbulent Reacting Flow

The CTRFlow group studies fundamental aspects of turbulent reacting flows through high performance computing, with an emphasis on combustion in nonpremixed flames. The group is led by David O. Lignell, who is a Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department and teaches courses in computational tools, numerical methods, combustion, and fluid mechanics. skills.

Our research focus is on flames and fires including soot formation, flame extinction and reigntion phenomena, and multiphase flows including coal and biomass combustion, and Lagrangian particle transport. Combustion is central to society and approximately 85% of the world’s energy derives from the burning of fossile fuels. Indeed, we heat our homes, drive our cars, and light our lives by the energy of the flame. We are working to improve modeling and simulation capabilities of turbulent reacting flows to develop a better fundamental understanding of the key physics, to generate high fidelity data for model validation, and to develop and improve models for combustion engineering, design, and hazard analysis. We use primarily three complementary simulation approaches: LES, DNS, and ODT, and are developing novel stochastic simulation techniques including the Heirarchical Parcel Swapping (HiPS) method.