The Turbulent Combustion Modeling Lab is a team of fastidious researchers and students focusing 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.
Meet the team
Cecile Devaud
Director of the Turbulent Combustion Lab
Professor in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. She is also a member of Waterloo Engineering’s Fire Research Group and the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy. Her research group focuses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for turbulent reacting flows. They are interested in developing and implementing new mathematical models for problems related to turbulent mixing, flame stabilization and emissions. Applications are diverse; ranging from aero and automotive engines to fire scenario analysis. More recently, some research activities have been devoted to numerical simulations of two-phase flows and compartment fires related to the nuclear industry.
Amir H. Mahdipour
Amir H. Mahdipour received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, in 2017 and 2021, respectively, prior to joining the turbulent combustion modeling lab at the University of Waterloo for his Ph.D. studies in January 2022. Currently, he works under the supervision of Prof. Devaud in the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Department. His research currently focuses on turbulent combustion modeling using the CSE model for non-premixed flames.
Amir had previously worked on exploring computational aspects of the CSE model using a DNS database of a premixed flame and currently works on improving this model for turbulent combustion modeling in RANS and LES, based on his experience with the DNS database.
The research group focuses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for turbulent reacting flows. The lab develops and implements new mathematical models for issues related to turbulent mixing, flame stabilization, and emissions.
Ahmed Abdalhamid
PhD candidate and researcher
Ahmed Abdalhamid received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Cairo University. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo. His research is in turbulent combustion modelling of buoyant diffusion flames. He focuses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of pool fires using the open source OpenFOAM package with in-house libraries for detailed combustion modeling. He joined the turbulent combustion modelling group of the University of Waterloo in September 2020 to start his PhD. In the research group, they focus on CFD modeling of reacting flows to simulate different phenomena associated with combusting flows. The applications include different combustion engines and fire analysis.
Ophélie Lesage
MASc candidate and researcher
Ophelie Lesage is a Master's student at the University of Waterloo's Department of Chemical Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Eric Croiset and Prof. Cecile Devaud.
She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree in Chemical Engineering in 2022. Her thesis is on the topic of modeling the usage of hydrogen as a fuel in reheat furnaces in the steel industry using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modeling with OpenFOAM.