Illinois launches $16M center to simulate plasma-controlled combustion

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will receive $16 million to fund a new center that will leverage extreme-scale computing to predict how plasmas could be used to control combustion. The research may pave the way for cleaner-burning combustors and more reliable and higher performance jet engines.

Professor Jonathan Freund of MechSE is co-leading the center with the PI, Professor William Gropp. He will orchestrate the predictive physics modeling and simulations, including the supporting experiments.

"Plasmas offer a little explored means of tuning combustion to meet engineering objectives of performance or efficiency," Freund said. "Harnessing the power forthcoming computer architectures, as is planned within this center, will enable truly predictive simulations that can advance this technology."

The other five MechSE faculty involved are Narayan Aluru, Harley Johnson, Carlos Pantano, Nick Glumac, and Dimitri Kyritsis.

Read the full article on the Coordinated Science Lab website.