Pollution Reduction Design for Innovative Combustion Technologies (PReDICT)

  • Supervisor: Prof. Alessandro Parente
  • Research center: Aero-Thermo-Mechanique
  • Research start date: 15.11.2021

Description

The European Union's objective to pursue climate- and environment-friendly transport systems within the Societal Challenge 4 identifies in novel combustion concepts a way to drastically reduce pollutant emissions of aircraft engines. A potentially step-changing opportunity to respond to this need is the technology transfer of industrial flameless combustors to aircraft gas-turbine engines. Even though successfully employed in furnaces, where factual demonstrations of emissions reductions are existent, the aeronautical application requires a deeper research work to face challenges related to a robust and safe design. On this regard, predictive numerical tools are essential to assess the feasibility and performance of a flameless aeronautical burner.

PReDICT bridges the gap between research and application by exploiting Uncertainty Quantification techniques for model calibration and forward uncertainty propagation, and by proposing a methodology to reliably predict pollutant emissions.

Biography

Riccardo holds a PhD in Aeronautical and Space Engineering, obtained in 2017 from Sapienza University, Rome (Italy). He has been a Post-Doctoral research fellow at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza, from 2017 to 2021. 

His research activity involves the modelling and the numerical simulation of reacting flows in combustion chambers. More specifically, it is focused on the physical understanding of the processes that characterise combustion phenomena, the interaction between kinetics, mixing and turbulence, the effects of evaporation in spray combustion, the quantification of uncertainty associated with physical models and their reduction in presence of uncertainty.

Publications

Selected publications:

An adaptive time-integration scheme for stiff chemistry based on Computational Singular Perturbation and Artificial Neural Networks, R. Malpica Galassi, P. P. Ciottoli, M. Valorani & H. G. Im, Journal of Computational Physics, 2021

Local combustion regime identification using machine learning, R. Malpica Galassi, P. P. Ciottoli, M. Valorani & H. G. Im, Combustion Theory and Modelling, 2021

Direct Numerical Simulations of the Evaporation of Dilute Sprays in Turbulent Swirling Jets , P.P. Ciottoli, F. Battista, R. Malpica Galassi, F. Dalla Barba, F. Picano , Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, 2020

Multi-stage heat release in lean combustion: Insights from coupled tangential stretching rate (TSR) and computational singular perturbation (CSP) analysis , A. Al Ramadan, R. Malpica Galassi, P.P. Ciottoli, S.M. Sarathy, M. Valorani , Combustion and Flame, 219, 2020

Characterization of jet-in-hot-coflow flames using tangential stretching rate , Z. Li, R. Malpica Galassi, P.P. Ciottoli, A. Parente, M. Valorani, Combustion and Flame, 208, 2019

Numerical analysis of laser-pulse transient ignition of oxygen/methane mixtures in rocket-like combustion chamber , G. Gargiulo, P.P. Ciottoli, E. Martelli, R. Malpica Galassi, M. Valorani, Acta Astronautica, 159, 2019

Automated chemical kinetic mechanism simplification with minimal user expertise , R. Malpica Galassi, P.P. Ciottoli, S.M., Sarathy, H.G. Im, S. Paolucci, M. Valorani, Combustion and Flame, 197, 2018

CSP-based chemical kinetics mechanisms simplification strategy for non-premixed combustion: an application to hybrid rocket propulsion, P.P. Ciottoli, R. Malpica Galassi, P. E. Lapenna, G. leccese, D. Bianchi, F. Nasuti, F. Creta, M. Valorani, Combustion and Flame, 186, 2017

Chemical model reduction under uncertainty, R. Malpica Galassi, M. Valorani, Habib N. Najm, Cosmin Safta, Mohammad Khalil, P.P. Ciottoli, Combustion and Flame, 179, 2017

Tangential Stretching Rate (TSR) Analysis of Non Premixed Reactive Flows, M. Valorani, P.P. Ciottoli, R. Malpica Galassi, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Vol.36, 2016

Computational Characterization of Ignition Regimes in a Syngas/Air Mixture with Temperature Fluctuations, P. Pal, M. Valorani, P.G. Arias, H.G. Im, M.S. Wooldridge, P.P. Ciottoli, R. Malpica Galassi, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Vol. 36, 2016

Entropy production and time scales, M. Valorani, S. Paolucci, P.P. Ciottoli, R. Malpica Galassi, Combustion Theory and Modelling, 21, 2016.