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Dr. Xinyu Zhao, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently awarded a $450,000 Young Investigator Research Program grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.<\/p>\nDr. Xinyu Zhao, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently awarded a $450,000 Young Investigator Research Program grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.<\/p>\n
Zhao, who joined the university in 2015, is one of just 43 scientists and engineers selected to receive awards from a nationwide pool of 285 applicants. The $19.1 million program funds outstanding young investigators who have shown \u201cexceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research,\u201d according to the announcement<\/a> from the AFOSR.<\/p>\n Zhao\u2019s proposal, which was named \u201c\u2019Pockets\u201d in Highly Turbulent Premixed Flames: Physics and Implications on Modeling,\u201d focuses on the efficient combustion of highly turbulent premixed flames and will begin in early 2018. The three-year grant will allow Zhao to hire one full-time and one part-time Ph.D. student to help carry out her research.<\/p>\n As part of her research, Zhao and her students will be using high performance computing facilities at UConn, as well as highly advanced supercomputer resources from the U.S. Department of Defense, to carry out the computationally-intensive simulations.<\/p>\n Zhao said that she is excited to start, as this research could test the limits of energy exertion in aeronautical engines:<\/p>\n \u201cMixing and reactions happen simultaneously in aeronautical combustors, and the intense turbulence often gets the flame surfaces to wrinkle, just like a torch flame when there is wind,\u201d Zhao said. \u201cWhen that wrinkle happens, it increases the surface area of the flame. The larger the surface area, the faster the burning rate, which will allow for a larger energy conversion rate.\u201d<\/p>\n That flame wrinkling, Zhao said, is key towards proving her hypothesis:<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it\u2019s widely understood that there is a certain limit to the wrinkling of a flame, I hypothesize that at a certain level, a transformation occurs, where the combustion changes from a surfacepropagating mode to a volumetric burning mode, which increases the amount of energy released.\u201d<\/p>\n The study will yield insights into the physics of premixed flames and will help researchers model combustion processes more accurately. Zhao says the research could have positive implications for not only the Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense, but also the aerospace industry as a whole:<\/p>\n \u201cThere are more and more stringent regulations every year now for emission in that industry,\u201d Zhao said. \u201cThis research will hopefully deepen our understanding of the combustion processes and eventually lead to developments that could help with emission reduction, while also allowing planes to fly farther on the same amount of fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n