Jeonglae Kim
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Engineering
Simulating turbulent flames on a computer is central to designing aircraft and rocket engines, but the full range of swirling motions in a flame is far too fine to compute directly. Engineers instead resolve only the large eddies and use a model to account for everything smaller.
- Fields
Engineering
Mathematics & Statistics
Physics
- Topics
turbulent combustion
large-eddy simulation
subgrid-scale model
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Build a modeling framework based on wavelet multiresolution analysis, which separates a flow by length scale, to discover subgrid-scale stress models that reproduce spectral energy transfer in large-eddy simulations of turbulent premixed flames.
- Use tensor representation theory to expand the true subgrid-scale stresses analytically in terms of local thermal, fluid and chemical states into a complete and minimal set of terms.
- Formulate the model optimization so it is consistent with the fundamental filtering concept of large-eddy simulation, rather than relying on the eddy-viscosity assumption that can only drain energy to small scales.
- Test the discovered models against high-fidelity databases of statistically one-dimensional turbulent premixed flames spanning different regimes of premixed combustion, assessing whether they capture combustion-induced energy backscatter.
More about the research
The trouble is that burning does not simply drain energy from large scales to small ones: heat release can push energy back up to larger scales, an effect called energy backscatter. Standard models, built on the idea that unresolved turbulence acts like extra viscosity, can only remove energy and so cannot represent this two-way exchange between turbulence and a flame.
Why it matters
More accurate and cheaper simulation of turbulent combustion would let engineers search wider design spaces for aerospace propulsion systems without building as many prototypes, supporting engines that burn less fuel and emit less carbon. The same modeling strategy could improve predictions in other fields where turbulence couples to extra physics, including atmospheric science, high-speed aerodynamics, and nuclear fusion.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jane Bae
California Institute of Technology, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Analyze high-resolution flow data to determine how the directionality (anisotropy) of unresolved small-scale turbulent motion behaves in attached and separating flows near walls.
Vinicius Maron Sauer
California State University-Northridge, CA·Engineering
Design new non-premixed counterflow burners using quadric surfaces and their combinations to create unevenly curved flames like those in practical combustion systems.
Tomas Chor
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Examine how symmetric instabilities, an overturning motion that grows at ocean fronts, modify the forward cascade of energy toward smaller scales at submesoscale fronts in the presence of mesoscale strain.
The school
Arizona State University Campus Immersion: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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