Radiative heat transfer process in practical combustion processes has received relatively little attention to date. Recently, it starts to generate increasing interest given the current trends of engine designs for both internal combustion engines and aeronautical engines. Radiation inside engines is a complex process involving the interactions between spectral gases, soot, spray, turbulence and the enclosure geometry. Gasses and soot/wall have distinct emission and absorption characteristics, and particles such as spray droplets have strong scattering effects that might alter the distribution of the heat flux. The turbulent fluctuations in temperature and composition add further complexity to the problem by affecting the production and destruction of soot in a significant manner. The complex geometries encountered in conventional engine designs create difficulties in measuring and modeling the heat transfer processes inside the engines. These factors render the understanding and modeling of the physical processes of radiation inside an engine very challenging. In this talk, first-principle-based high-fidelity models are employed to study the radiative heat transfer process under engine-relevant conditions. The physics will be discussed by means of case studies of several recent simulations. Details of the high-fidelity models will be explained, and comparison with popular reduced-order models will be made.

Dr. Xinyu Zhao is an assistant professor at University of Connecticut. She joined the Mechanical Engineering Department in 2015 Spring, and prior to that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow in Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center at Princeton (2014), co-sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory and Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph. D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University (2013), and she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University (2006 and 2008). Dr. Zhao is actively working on detailed radiation modeling, turbulent combustion modelling, as well as the large-scale fire simulations with the support of National Science Foundation and FM Global.