Debolina Dasgupta

Doctoral student Debolina Gupta has been selected by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for the 2018 Martin Summerfield Graduate Award in Propellant and Combustion.

The fourth-year grad student works with Prof. TIm Lieuwen in the Ben T. Zinn Combustion lab, where her research has explored turbulent chemistry interactions in lean premixed flames. She expects to defend her dissertation sometime this fall and will likely continue her work in one of the large national labs.

"Lean premixed flames are what you find in any gas turbine, from jet engines to power production," she explained. "I've been trying to understand how turbulence can affect the chemistry of the flame. Most models look at the chemistry in laminar flames, which are, by definition, not turbulent, so there's a lot we don't know. If we can better understand the physics, we can develop models for different types of simulations in large-scale engines, where turbulence is present."

Dasgupta says that, ultimately, her work can help engineers to gain better insight into phenomena like ignition, blow-off characteristics, and flame sustainability.

"Turbulence can change the concentration and the gradience of scalers such as chemical species and temperature profiles that sustain the flame," she pointed out. "That's an important thing to follow in combustion."

The $1,250 Summerfield Graduate Award is given to an exemplary graduate student researcher in the field of propellant and combustion. It is named in honor of the late Martin Summerfield, a physicist and rocket scientist, who co-founded Aerojet, and headed up Princeton University's propulsion and combustion laboratory. Dasgupta earned her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at Jadavpur University and master's degree in aerospace engineering at the India Institute of Technology.