AE Seminar

A Fundamental Investigation of Fluid Dynamics in Inhomogeneous Flows

ft. 

Ben Emerson 

Principal Research Engineer | Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab | Georgia Tech

Thursday, April 3
11am - 12pm 
Guggenheim 442

About the Seminar: 
Reacting flows produce fascinating global stability bifurcations due to their density inhomogeneity.  This seminar provides a fundamental technical investigation of the vortex dynamics in inhomogeneous combustor flow fields.  The seminar takes a tour of the hydrodynamic stability analysis tools that can model these flows, parameterize their global stability bifurcations, and provide insight into the underlying vortex dynamics.  An important outcome of this work is to demonstrate the unsteady baroclinic torque as a key mechanism for the sensitivity of a combustor's fluid dynamics to its density field.  The seminar also briefly introduces an experiment conducted to study the role of vortex dynamics in the transport of liquid fuel in an aviation combustor.  This experiment provides context for the hydrodynamic stability analysis to root its fundamental contributions in the exciting application of future aviation combustors.

About the Speaker: 
Dr. Emerson is a Principal Research Engineer in the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab at Georgia Tech.  Dr. Emerson's central fundamental research theme is experimental and theoretical research on the fluid dynamics of combustion systems.   This includes an applied focus on clean energy for aviation and power generation, including hydrogen and ammonia combustion, sustainable aviation fuels, combustion dynamics, operability, and emissions.   Dr. Emerson brings experience developing hydrodynamic stability analysis tools as a resident researcher at Cambridge University and serves externally as the ASME/IGTI Electric Power Committee and the vice review chair for the ASME Turbo Expo.