High school curriculum module development winners announced

Mrs. Melissa McCarthy, chemistry teacher at William Henry Harrison High School (West Lafayette, Indiana) and Mr. John Weitlauf, engineering design and development teacher at Benton Central Junior–Senior High School (Oxford, Indiana), are the joint recipients of a $5000 grant from the Central States Section of the Combustion Institute to develop combustion science-based learning materials to advance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning for high school students.

Mrs. McCarthy’s and Mr. Weitlauf’s proposal was reviewed by a panel of combustion-science experts from around the country and selected based on its high rankings among several merit-based criteria. Their proposed materials intend to augment first-level engineering students and second-level chemistry students by increasing emphasis on real-world combustion applications, introducing students to rocket-based combustion, and engineering solutions to rocket-based flight.

A major feature of their proposed work is joint collaboration with researchers at Purdue University. The high school teachers will work closely with students and researchers in Professor Steve Son’s research group in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. They intend to use the funds largely to purchase materials that allow students to engineer combustion-based rocket designs and build the rockets after doing the proper chemical and combustion analysis.

The teachers will be recognized at the 8th US National Combustion Meeting of the Combustion Institute, May 19–22, 2013, in Park City, Utah.

2012 Combustion Art Competition winners
[image: 2012 Combustion Art Competition]  [image: 2012 Combustion Art Competition]

The 2012 Combustion Art Competition winners have been posted. See the Awards section for the results.

Dayton meeting summary posted

See the News section for a detailed summary of the 2012 Spring Technical Meeting of the Central States Section of The Combustion Institute.

The aim of the Central States Section (CSS) is to assist in accomplishing the broad objectives of The Combustion Institute:

Please see a short history of the Central States Section for more information.

The Section By-Laws are available at this link. They were last revised 2005-03, and the revisions were approved by the membership at the 2006 meeting in Philadelphia.

News

Archived news items are also available.

Meetings

For a complete list, visit the Meetings page.

Student Support

This section includes information about travel support for student presenters at the Section Meeting and at the International Symposium.

The Section offers travel awards for students within the Section who travel to present at the International Symposium on Combustion. This includes the James E. Peters Travel Fellowship, awarded to one student to present at the Symposium.

Use the request form and submit to the Section Treasurer (Tom Briggs) by 2012 July 2 (emailed/postmarked) for the Warsaw meeting. If sending by post, then email the Treasurer to let him know the application is in transit. The presenter must be a student at the time of the meeting. Only one award per paper and one award per student is allowed.


Awards

This section list awards bestowed by the Section.

Outstanding Student Presenter Award

Recipient Institution Advisor Paper title
2010 (Champaign IL)
Maria Agathou University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign A comparative experimental study of butanol electrosprays through phase-doppler anemometry
2008 (Tuscaloosa AL)
Melissa Holtmeyer Washington University in St. Louis R. Axelbaum Blow-off behavior for oxy-coal flames with varying oxygen-enrichment in N2 and CO2 environments
2006 (Cleveland OH)
Jignesh Maun University of Maryland P. Sunderland Thin film pyrometry with a digital still camera
2004 (Austin TX)
Tershia Pinder University of Michigan A. Atreya An experimental investigation of the effect of fuel concentration and velocity fluctuations on non-premixed jet flames
2002 (Knoxville TN)
Sha Zhang University of Kentucky J.M. McDonough A low-order discrete dynamical system model of turbulent fluctuations in a reduced mechanism for H2-O2 combustion

Combustion Art Competition

The Combustion Art Competition was initiated in 2004 at the International Combustion Symposium in Chicago, and this inaugural event received 40 submissions of outstanding quality. From 2004-2010, prizes were awarded by vote of a panel of judges; since 2011, ballots have been distributed to meeting attendees for voting. A cash prize is offered to winners. The winning entries from all years are displayed below.

The 2012 Combustion Art Competition was held at the Section meeting in Dayton.

All images are displayed with permission of the copyright holders; please contact the copyright holders for reuse permissions. Click on the image for a larger version.

2012 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Ternary Flame Art Image Prize for Artistic Merit — “Ternary Flame Art Image”
“This image shows a ternary flame system with a Santoro burner below a ring burner. The steady soot column generated by the acetylene diffusion flame passes into the hydrogen ring flame, where it is oxidized. This allows soot oxidation to be studied in the absence of soot formation. The camera is a Nikon D100 digital still camera at 6.1 megapixels. This research is supported by NSF.”
H. Guo, P.M. Anderson, P.B. Sunderland (University of Maryland)
[image] Flame Personality Disorder Prize for Technical Merit — “Flame Personality Disorder”
“This is a rainbow schlieren video rendering of a fuel lean swirl stabilized combustion process captured at 50,000 frames per second. Therefore, every second of this video represents approximately 2.4 milliseconds in real time. The flame results in two distinct regions of turbulent disorder. The lower half of the video shows fast, small-scale turbulent structures in the reaction zone that dissipate nearly instantaneously at the flame boundary. Larger scale, slower moving turbulent structures develop downstream of the flame in the product flow region.”
Dan Mitchell (University of Alabama)

Click the image to download the video (53.5 MB).
2011 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Flaming Star First Place — “Flaming Star”
“Microgravity flames converging toward the center of the starburst ‘implode’ against an outflow of wind, creating a diffusion flame ‘supernova’.”
Sandra L. Olson (NASA Glenn Research Center)
[image] Dr. Combustion Second Place — “Dr. Combustion”
“A family of methane-air counterflow and premixed flames of different configurations with and without addition of nanoparticles. Depending on flame configuration, the particles may pass reaction zone, be heated and irradiate light (nose, beard, and hair). In certain configurations of a counterflow diffusion flame, the reaction zone acts as a strong fluid-dynamics source and diverts the particles, making them not reach the reaction zone (eyes and mouth). A classical methane-air diffusion flame provides Dr. Combustion with an elegant hat as he cannot conceal the joy of discovery.”
Bogdan Pavlov and Li Qiao (Purdue University)
[image] Super Fire Whirl Third Place — “Super Fire Whirl”
“A fire whirl developed over a pool of benzene, note the waves and disturbances on the fuel surface. An upward mirrored reflection of the whirl is rotated to create the s-like shape.”
Nelson Akafuah and Kozo Saito (University of Kentucky)
[image] Fan of Fire Third Place — “Fan of Fire - Surface Inclination Effects on Upward Flame Spread”
“This "fan of fire" visually displays the effect gravity has on upward flame spread over thermally-thick materials. Starting from the left "ceiling fire", as the inclination angle or tilt of a burning surface is increased underside flames transition from blue, well-mixed laminar flames into increasingly turbulent yellow flames on the topside that "lift" from the surface dramatically increasing the flame thickness. These images were taken perpendicular to the surface of a thick sample of Polymethyl Methacrylate mounted flush into insulation board as flames spread upward. These tests have helped in finding critical inclinations with maximum flame spread rates, burning rates and heat fluxes from the flame.”
Michael Gollner and Xinyan Huang (University of California, San Diego)
2010 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Porous Inert Media with Stable Methane Flame First Place — “Porous Inert Media with Stable Methane Flame”
“The flame produces a sound pressure level of 92.1 dB at an equivalence ratio of 0.7. An artistic sound plot spans across the bottom of the image.”
L. Justin Williams (University of Alabama)
[image] Flame, Gone With Butterfly Second Place — “Flame, Gone With Butterfly”
“CH4/Air premixed flame attached to a carbon-coated brass matrix cooled with water. Fuel rich to fuel lean from left to right and top to bottom by increasing air flow rate and decreasing CH4 flow rate. Small flames dance around and a butterfly appears. When the butterfly flies away, flame is gone.”
Yanan Gan and Li Qiao (Purdue University)
[image] The Heated Man in the Moon Third Place — “The Heated Man in the Moon”
“This Schlieren Image captures a turbulent hydrogen jet mixing with quiescent air (on the right), ignited by a spark plug (on the left) and the flame propagating through a constant volume combustion chamber.”
Tanisha L. Booker (University of Alabama)
2009 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Fire's Ribbons and Lace First Place — “Fire's Ribbons and Lace”
“The delicate and fractal nature of charring cellulose is amplified here in repeated magnified images of a flame spread front over ashless filter paper.”
Sandra Olson (NASA Glenn Research Center), Fletcher Miller (San Diego State University), Indrek Wichman (Michigan State University)
[image] The Devil's in the Small-Scale Details Second Place (tie) — “The Devil's in the Small-Scale Details”
“The research around the picture involves predicting the flame spread on warehouse fires using small-scale cone calorimet er data. The image shows a test performed on the cone calorimeter in which 2 cardboard cells are set up and free burned to better understand the burning characteristics of a larger packed commodity box. The outer shell of the box is corruga ted cardboard and the fuel inside consists of polystyrene cups. The image shows the polystyrene burning after the front face of cardboard has burned away. The mass loss rate from the tests is then used to predict flame spread on large 30-40 foot stacks of boxes stored in warehouses.”
Kristopher Overholt (Worchester Polytechnic Institute)
[image] Man Makes Fire, Fire Makes Man Second Place (tie) — “Man Makes Fire, Fire Makes Man”
“This short exposure photograph of a non-premixed turbulent jet flame of ethylene burning in quiescent air captures detac hed flamelets with an eerily human form.”
Scott Skeen (Washington University in St. Louis)
[image] Swirl-Stabilized Flame Enclosed by Porous Inert Media Special Recognition — “Swirl-Stabilized Flame Enclosed by Porous Inert Media”
“Swirl-stabilized flame enclosed by porous inert media (PIM). PIM stabilized portion of the flame experiences flashback and the flame gradually stabilizes within the PIM.”
Daniel Sequera and Ajay Agrawal (University of Alabama)
2008 Combustion Art Competition
[image] HALO Burner First Place — “HALO Burner”
“Photo of a new ultra-low NOx process burner firing a refinery fuel gas mixture in a relatively cold test furnace at a low firing rate. The burner incorporates some advanced aerodynamic mixing techniques and is called the HALO burner because of the ceramic ring at the outlet.”
Chuck Baukal (John Zink Company)
[image] Outdoor Candle Second Place — “Outdoor Candle”
“A candle structure includes a candle body and a plurality of wicks. The candle body is configured with a top and bottom surface, and an outside wall that tapers substantially inward from the top surface to the bottom surface. The plurality of wicks is configured to supply stable preheated air through the gaps of standing wicks that protrude from the top surface of the candle structure. The plurality of wicks extends above the body and the wicks are aligned longitudinally. The plurality of wicks is arranged radially to taper outward toward the bottom surface of the candle body such that a flame is produced when the wicks are ignited. An air channel is configured to supply stable preheated air to a base of the flame, the air channel extending through the plurality of wicks and being graduated so that the flow of air through the air channel is substantially laminar. A heat conductive rod extending downward from a top of the air channel, wherein the heat conductive rod is configured to increase the temperature of and lower the air pressure of the air at the top of the air channel. It further maintains stable preheated air supply to the base of the flame. As a result, the flame is larger with less smoke and unburned fuel, stronger and less susceptible to air disturbances such as wind. When the wind gets strong, the adequately warmed air, passing through the air channel, increases. It increases the strength of the flame. The stronger the wind blows, the tougher the flame stands without smoke.”
Susumu Matsuyama (Almond Lamp Company)
[image] Centerbody Flames Third Place — “Centerbody Flames”
“The images shown are photographs of ethylene/air/nitrogen diffusion flames stabilized behind a bluff centerbody. The two images on the top show the centerbody flame photographed from the side (top left) and top views (top right). The blue regions are associated with the flame front and the other colors of the flame are largely due to blackbody radiation from the soot. The intense yellow radiation is from soot trapped in a tight ring vortex downstream of the stabilizing bluff body. The motion of the soot trapped in the vortex can be seen in the longer exposure photograph taken from the top.
The bottom two images are of a centerbody flame with the same inlet flow velocities as the case shown above but with higher nitrogen content in the feed gases. The image on the lower left shows a blue ring flame that forms around the main flame immediately downstream of the centerbody. This blue ring flame exhibits a slight oscillation in the vertical direction. The image on the lower right shows the region downstream of the ring flame for the same conditions. The disturbances in the downstream region of the flame are amplified as it passes through the tube, resulting in the large structures shown in the short exposure (0.8 ms) photo.”
Scott Stouffer, Garth Justinger (University of Dayton Research Institute), Mel Roquemore, Amy Lynch, Vince Belovich, Joe Zelina, Jim Gord (Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base), Keith Grinstead, Vish Katta and Kyle Frische (Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorporated)
2007 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Soot Spirals in a Laminar Flame First Place — “Soot Spirals in a Laminar Flame”
“In a nonpremixed jet flame formation of soot takes place within the flame zone. While soot particles are transported away from the flame zone they experience Newtonian, thermophoretic, and pressure forces induced via particle-fluid interaction. These forces in a centerbody flame produce a spectacular spiraling motion for the soot particles. Traces of soot particles (green) are visualized in the experiment by shining a YAG laser sheet. Radiation from soot (orange) and emission from excited CH radicals (blue) are also captured in the direct photograph of the laboratory flame. Calculations for this flame are performed using UNICORN code. Trajectories of the soot particles are shown in green, soot radiation is shown in orange and CH concentration is shown in blue. Soot particles originating at the flame surface are moving toward the center of the primary recirculation zone in a helical pattern. Some soot particles are also entering the secondary recirculation zone.”
Scott Stouffer, Viswanath Katta, William Roquemore, Garth Justinger, Vincent Belovich, Amy Lynch, Joe Miller, Robert Pawlik, Joseph Zelina, Sukesh Roy, Keith Grinstead and James Gord (Air Force Research Laboratory, Propulsion Directorate, Wright Patterson Air Force Base)
[image] The Almond Flame Second Place — “The Almond Flame”
“A dual cylinder wick lamp creates a flame inside an outer flame. The flame of the picture uses 91% rubbing isopropyl alcohol has a burning, vacuum column surrounded by a pink layer and a blue layer cylinder flame. The vacuum column holds the flame perimeter toward the center. The warm air flow through a heated almond flower surrounds the flame to improve the combustion of the outer flame and protect the outer flame from the wind. When the wind gets strong, the adequately warmed air, passing through the air channels in the center and between the cylinder wicks, increases. It increases the strength of the flame and results smokeless from the flame under windy conditions. The stronger the wind blows, the tougher the flame stands. This Almond Flame shows clean laminar flow offers steady purification, and strength under windy conditions offers unlimited fortune.”
Susumu Matsuyama (Almond Lamp Corporation)
[image] Spherical Ethylene Diffusion Flame in Microgravity Third Place — “Spherical Ethylene Diffusion Flame in Microgravity”
“This is an image of a spherical diffusion flame of ethylene burning in air in the NASA GRC 2.2 s drop tower. The image was recorded about 1.4 s after ignition. The ethylene flowrate is 1.5 mg/s and the scale is revealed by the 6.5 mm porous sphere visible in the image. The image was recorded using a Nikon D100 digital single-lens reflex camera with a 125 ms exposure.”
P.B. Sunderland (University of Maryland), D.L. Urban and D.P. Stocker (NASA Glenn Research Center), B.H. Chao (University of Hawaii) and R.L. Axelbaum (Washington University)
[image] Untitled Fourth Place
“CH* chemiluminescence imaging of cylindrical detonations in an C2H2 + O2 mixture. Successive detonations were initiated at the center points in a manner described in Cetegen, B. M., Crary, F. L. and Dabora, E. K., 'The interaction of periodically generated cylindrical detonations in a simulated hypersonic flow,' Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Vol. 28, pp. 629-635, 2000.”
Baki Cetegen, Lynwood Crary and Eli Dabora (University of Connecticut)
[image] Diesel Jets Fifth Place — “Diesel Jets”
“The picture shows simultaneous planar images of the soot (red) and OH-radical (green) distributions in combusting diesel fuel jets at various stages of development. They were acquired in an optically accessible diesel engine using overlapping laser sheets for planar laser-induced incandescence (PLII) of the soot and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) of the OH. The two simultaneous images were acquired using two intensified CCD cameras, false-colored to show the soot in red and OH in green, and then superimposed to form a single image. These images were acquired as part of an ongoing study of in-cylinder processes in diesel engines to reduce emissions and improve the efficiency of these engines.”
John Dec (Sandia National Laboratories) and Dale Tree (Brigham Young University)
2006 Combustion Art Competition
[image] Microflame Sunflower First Place — “Microflame Sunflower”
“This montage was inspired by the natural patterns seen in sunflowers. The seeds in a sunflower are separated by the Golden Angle, which produces what looks like simultaneous spirals in both directions around the middle of the sunflower. In addition, the number of spirals and petals on a sunflower are always one of a number in the Fibonacci series (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55). This pattern is a re-occurring theme in nature (seashells, pinecones, etc...). We chose this pattern to represent our progress in microcombustion, as we spiral in to find the smallest possible flame. We also wanted the montage to represent the now flowering topic of microcombustion.”
Ben Mellish and Fletcher Miller (National Center for Space Exploration Research); Dan Dietrich and Pete Struk (NASA Glenn Research Center); James T'ien (Case Western Reserve University).
[image] Second Place
“In this color schlieren image, methane/air flames are seen as small vertical elements being emitted from a burner at the center of the image. The flames impinge on a 25 cm diameter cylinder mounted 10 mm above the burner surface. the cylinder is rotating in a counterclockwise direction at 5.5 meters/sec. This configuration is important in the flame treatment of plastic films by altering the film surface in preparation for printing.”
Colleen Stroud, Melvyn Branch and Jean Hertzberg (University of Colorado, Boulder).
[image] Radiation Demon Third Place — “Radiation Demon”
“Radiative heat flux contours on a tunnel wall from a three-dimensional flame spread model. Contours modified with nonlinear color map and some image processing.”
Ioan Feier (Case University).
2004 Combustion Art Competition
[image] First Place
“Low-speed opposing jets of fuel (top) and air (bottom) formed a flat laminar diffusion flame. As the jet velocities are increased a weak turbulent flame is generated. Velocity and particle fields are superimposed on temperature distribution on the left and right halves of the picture, respectively. Particles injected from fuel and air jets are shown with black and white dots, respectively. Jet instabilities generated vortices, which; in turn, enhanced mixing and broadened the reaction zone. The laminar flame at the center is extinguished and the turbulent flame in the wings is stabilized. Turbulent fluctuations are evident in the velocity field and the associated vortical structures are evident in the particle field. Simulations are performed using UNICORN code.”
Viswanath Katta, Terry Mayer, James Gord and William Roquemore (Wright Patterson Air Force Base)
[image] Second Place
“This is a photo of a full scale flare being tested at sunset at the John Zink R&D Test Center in Tulsa, OK.”
Chuck Baukal (John Zink Company)
[image] Third Place
“All four flames involve methane/oxygen/nitrogen diffusion flames at 1 bar in the NASA Glenn 2.2 second drop tower. The flame at upper left involves oxygen flowing into 28% (by volume) methane and has unusual pink coloration. The flame at upper right involves methane flowing into 40% oxygen and has large bright soot agglomerates. The flame at lower left involves oxygen flowing into 30% methane and has a bright soot halo outside of the flame sheet. The flame at lower right involves methane flowing into air and has a soot shell well inside of the flame sheet.”
Jason Taylor (National Center for Microgravity Research) and Richard Axelbaum (Washington University)

Board of Advisors

The officers and at-large members are listed below, with their affiliation and the year that their term expires. Of the 19 current members, 9 are from academia, 5 are with government agencies, and 5 are from industry.

Officers & Chairpersons
Chair (2013) N.G. Glumac University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2014)
Chair-elect (2013) A.K. Agrawal University of Alabama (2016)
Treasurer (2013) T.E. Briggs, Jr. Southwest Research Institute (2013)
Secretary (2013) C.E. Baukal John Zink Company (2016)
Past Chair (2013) I.S. Wichman Michigan State University (2013)
Webmaster C.E.A. Finney Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2014)
Auditor M. Wooldridge University of Michigan (2014)
Outreach Chair T.J. Jacobs Texas A&M University (2016)
Chair Emeritus R.J. Priem
Chair Emeritus T.P. Torda
At-Large Members
J. Abraham Purdue University (2012)
S.K. Aggrawal University of Illinois at Chicago (2016)
D. Blunck Air Force Research Laboratory (2018)
M.A. Benjamin General Electric Company (2017)
S.A. Ciatti Argonne National Laboratory (2012)
J.A. Drallmeier Missouri University of Science and Technology (2012)
W. Kulatilaka Spectral Energies, LLC (2018)
S.L. Olson NASA Glenn (2014)
A. Ratner University of Iowa (2018)
R.S. Tranter Argonne National Laboratory (2018)
S. Wooldridge Ford Motor Company (2014)

Financial Sponsors

The following are recognized for their past and continuing generous donations to support the Section:

2012   Central States Section, Dayton OH
    National Science Foundation
    Spectral Energies LLC
    ConocoPhillips
    Innovative Scientific Solutions, Inc.
    University of Dayton Research Institute - von Ohain Fuels and Combustion Center
    General Electric Aviation
2010   Central States Section, Champaign IL
    ConocoPhillips
    National Science Foundation
    Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2009   6th U.S. National Combustion Meeting, Ann Arbor MI
    National Science Foundation
    University of Michican College of Engineering
    The Combustion Institute
    Bosch
    Princeton Instruments
    Pratt & Whitney
    University of Michigan Office of the Vice President for Research
    University of Michigan Department of Aerospace Engineering
    University of Michigan Department of Mechanical Engineering
    Elsevier
2008   Central States Section, Tuscaloosa AL
    National Science Foundation
    Alabama Power
    International Journal of Engine Research
    UA Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies
2004   Central States Section, Austin TX
    National Science Foundation
2003   Joint U.S. Meeting, Chicago IL
    National Science Foundation
    National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    General Motors Corporation
    Rolls-Royce Corporation
2002   Central States Meeting, Knoxville TN
    General Motors Corporation
2001   Joint U.S. Meeting, Oakland CA
    Ford Motor Company
    National Aeronautics and Space Administration
2000   Central States Meeting, Indianapolis IN
    Ford Motor Company
    General Motors Corporation
    Rolls-Royce Corporation
1999   Joint U.S. Meeting, Washington DC
    Ford Motor Company
    General Motors Corporation