PhD Seminar Series: “Recent progress on aviation research at Sandia National Laboratories”

This talk provides an overview of recent progress on the aero-propulsion program at Sandia National Labs. After a brief introduction of Sandia, the Combustion Research Facility and the Applied Combustion department, we will go through the recent and ongoing research projects. Our aviation program is divided into two main parts: Combustion research and contrail formation; both efforts being based on the experimental output of dedicated facilities, aiming at emulating reference systems at relevant conditions. The combustion program focuses on providing fundamental understanding of spray, combustion and emissions (soot formation) at pressures relevant to modern and next generation aero-engines, but also aims at producing data for different fuels, with an emphasis on low fuel volume requirements. The atmospheric nucleation facilities experimentally investigates contrail formation, mostly focusing on the nucleation and initial growth. A common ground for all experimental work is their reliance to non-intrusive diagnostics, applying a large array of optical techniques to study the different processes in detail. The two axes of research are also accompanied by simulation efforts, covering a range of fundamental and applied approaches.