Welcome to the Turbulent Combustion Modeling Lab

Turbulent Combustion Modeling Lab

The Turbulent Combustion Modeling Lab research activities focus on the multi-engineering facets of turbulent combustion modeling found in many industrial applications ranging from aero and automotive engines to furnaces to fire safety.

We are interested in developing high fidelity multiscale turbulent fluid flow-combustion simulation tools as well as tackling shorter-term challenging industrial problems.

Our approach is based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) including Reynold Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) methods and Large Eddy Simulation (LES). We have been developing and implementing new mathematical models for problems related to turbulent mixing, ignition, extinction, flame stabilization, fuel spray, and atmospheric emissions.

The lab is run by renowned researcher, Cecile Devaud, an award-winning, patent-holding professor, associate chair and turbulent combustion expert who is also a member of University of Waterloo Engineering’s Fire Research Group and the University of Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy.

We work closely with our industry and university partners in Canada and globally providing the most suitable solutions and advancing fundamental research in the field of turbulent combustion modeling. If you are interested in sponsoring research please contact us directly.

lifted flame animation

Figure 1. The lift-off height observed using the tracker of OH mass fraction value of 0.0005 superimposed on the stoichiometric iso-surface of the third flame (Re = 19500)

News

The modelling of soot formation is investigated for two turbulent flames, at atmospheric and 3 atm pressure conditions. For the first time, a semi-empirical soot formulation that accounts for soot inception, coagulation, surface growth, and oxidation processes is coupled with the turbulent combustion model, Conditional Source-term Estimation (CSE) using Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes equations.