80NSSC19M0195

The relevance of the project is that petroleum-based liquid fuels are currently used to power combustion engines such as diesel engines and gas turbines. In these systems, droplets in the spray often evaporate and burn in an ambient at pressures and temperatures well above the critical state of the fuel. However, there is very little fundamental information available to understand the combustion of liquid fuels at elevated pressures.

The microgravity environment achieved in a drop tower facility provides the opportunity to reveal the fundamental information about liquid fuel combustion at high pressures that is not currently available. High-pressure combustion research at low gravity has tremendous potential to be applied to a wide range of terrestrial applications as more fundamental combustion physics can be revealed when the added complication of gravity is eliminated.

The outcome of the project will be new insights on how liquid fuels combust in environments similar to practical engines and providing quantitative results for guiding advanced engine designs. Experimental results obtained in this proposed work will be a valuable database for the research community for developing, validating, and optimizing numerical models.

This work is aligned with NASA's research interests of physical science research in the combustion science area. It is also consistent with recent research priorities of high-pressure combustion in Glenn Research Center.

Prairie View A&M University

NOT APPLICABLE

43.008 - Office of Stem Engagement (OSTEM)

Shared Services Center (NSSC) [NASA]

Prairie View, Texas 77446-0788 United States

Single Zip Code

NOT APPLICABLE

Amendment Since initial award the End Date has been extended from 09/30/22 to 09/30/25 and the total obligations have increased 461% from $834,821 to $4,684,568.