Combustion emissions produced from burning real transportation fuels have many environmental impacts. However, detailed chemistry across multiple phases, time scales, and thermodynamic conditions make predicting combustion emissions challenging. Detailed modeling of the gas phase alone is prohibitively expensive, due to the large size and stiffness of the kinetic models. The...
In this paper, I present the design of Mira 2, a small-scale, liquid bipropellant rocket engine, with a specific focus on its oxidizer-centered pintle injector. Building upon the valuable lessons and insights gained from the empirical testing of its predecessor, Mira 1, the Mira 2 engine incorporates several improvements and...
Small hydrocarbon particles such as soot and soot precursors pose a serious threat to human health and Earth's climate. Understanding the mechanisms by which soot particles form and grow is the first step to reducing the prevalence of these particles. Computational simulations are used to investigate combusting systems which are...
For this project, we designed a soot modeling software to produce a full particle density function. This model uses the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo with a full conditioning particle selection method to capture soot nucleation and coagulation in a diffusion flame. We investigate the use of graphic processing units as...
Smoldering combustion in wildland fires is a critical phenomenon that needs in-depth study because it can initiate with weaker ignition sources, can persist for long periods, is difficult to suppress, and can transit to flaming combustion. Cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin are the major organic constituents within biomass, in varying proportions...
The High Altitude Liquid Engine (HALE) team is developing of a 2000 lbf thrust liquid propellant engine for a flight vehicle capable of breaching the Karman Line (100 km in altitude). As part the development of this flight vehicle, this research focuses on the design and characterization of a novel...
High-potential molecules derived from biomass sources may suitably replace or supplement traditional nonrenewable hydrocarbon fuels to reduce pollution and fuel processing costs. Due to expensive and time-consuming property testing, models that predict key properties from optical data would initially vet potential additives before investment and bench-scale testing. Attenuated Total Reflection...
In this work, I developed a six degree of freedom flight simulator specific to liquid engine launch vehicles. This flight simulator improves upon available software by accounting for liquid engine specific phenomena such as tank pressurization, liquid engine performance, and center of gravity modeling. Additionally, I implemented methods for optimization...
The aerospace industry uses chemical kinetic models when designing propulsion systems to acquire specific details about the rate of chemical reactions, heat release, and combustion stability. These models, however, are too large and stiff to be useful as they can take weeks to run computations on. The pyMARS python package...
Accurately modeling the chemistry of conventional and alternative liquid transportation fuels in combustion technology is vital to predicting important quantities such as the burning rate, heat release, and pollutant emissions. However, incorporating detailed chemical kinetic models into reactive-flow simulations poses a significant challenge due to the associated high computational expense...