Central States Section
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2009 Combustion Art Competition winners
The 2009 Combustion Art Competition winners have been posted. See the Awards section for the results.

Student Presenter Travel Awards
Students who traveled over 50 miles to present at the U.S. National Combustion Meeting in Ann Arbor are eligible for a travel stipend to defray expenses. See the Travel section for instructions and form. Deadline for submission of forms to the Combustion Institute office is June 15.

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

• by providing for closer and more frequent contacts between members residing in the geographic area of the Central United States, i.e., within the states of:
  Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin
• by promoting the science and application of combustion
• to providing a single forum whereby the diverse scientific and engineering disciplines can be brought together to interchange information related to combustion science and applications.

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

News

• Cleveland meeting summary

  A very successful spring meeting of the Central States Section of The Combustion Institute was held at the Marriott Downtown hotel in Cleveland, Ohio on May 21–23. The meeting was attended by 136 participants, including 58 students. The Monday morning James E. Peters plenary lecture entitled “The Clean Fuel Initiative” was given by William Harrison of the Air Force Research Laboratory. The Tuesday morning invited speakers were Margaret Wooldridge of the University of Michigan who gave a talk entitled “Chemical kinetics of HCCI and other low-temperature combustion strategies”, and John Buckmaster of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who spoke on “The modeling of heterogeneous propellant combustion”. The conference consisted of the three invited lectures and 87 technical presentations arranged in 15 technical sessions.

  The Outstanding Student Presenter award went to Jignesh D. Maun of the University of Maryland. Maun's advisor is Peter Sunderland, and the title of the presentation was “Thin film pyrometry with a digital still camera”. The winner of the James E. Peters Student Fellowship is Michelle L. Somers of Louisiana State University. Her co-authors are Jennifer W. McClaine and advisor M. Julia Wornat. The paper is titled “The formations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from the supercritical pyrolysis of 1-methylnapthalene”. Somers will receive $1500 for this award. Eight other students from the section who will be presenting accepted papers at the 31st International Combustion Symposium in Heidelberg will receive $750 each.

  The winner of the 2006 Combustion Art Competition was a montage of microflames arranged in a sunflower pattern by Mellish, Miller, Dietrich, Struk, and T'ien. Second place was a color schlieren image of a methane/air flame impinging on a cylinder by Stroud, Branch, and Hertzberg. Third place was Feier's depiction of radiative heat flux contours on a tunnel wall from a three-dimensional flame spread model.

  Elections were held to replace departing board members. Appreciation was expressed to Nader Rizk and Robert Lucht, who completed their term of service on the board. Hukam Mongia was elected to a second term on the board, and James Seaba and John Abraham were unanimously approved for their first term on the board.

  We greatly appreciate the dedicated efforts of Dennis Stocker and his coworkers in hosting the spring meeting of the Central States Section of The Combustion Institute. We also wish to thank Indrek Wichman who served as Program Chairperson and Hukam Mongia who served as Papers Review Chairperson. Additionally, we wish to thank the many students from Case Western Reserve University who assisted with the audio-visual equipment in the various session rooms. [2006-06-15]

Archived news items are also available.

Meetings

• Eastern States Section Meeting
  Dates: 2009 October 18-21
  Location: College Park, Maryland
  Hosted by: University of Maryland
  Link: http://www.essci-fall09.umd.edu


• Western States Section Fall Meeting
  Dates: 2009 October 26-27
  Location: Irvine, California
  Hosted by: University of California at Irvine
  Link: http://wssci.us/2009FALLMEETING/Default.htm

For a complete list, visit the Meetings page.

Student Support

Student Presenter Travel Awards are available for students who traveled more than 50 miles to present at the U.S. National Combustion Meeting in Ann Arbor. These awards are to offset costs of travel, food and lodging but not registration fees. The form must be completed and submitted to Barbara Waronek at the main Combustion Institute office no later than 2009 June 15. Please see the form for submission instructions.

Student Presenter Travel Award form

Awards

This section list awards bestowed by the Section.

Outstanding Student Presenter Award

Recipient	Institution	Advisor	Paper title
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 Combustion Symposium in Chicago, and this inaugural event received 40 submissions of outstanding quality. The winning entries from all years are displayed below.

All images are displayed with permission of the copyright holders. Click on the image for a larger version.

The 2009 Combustion Art Competition, held at the Sixth U.S. National Combustion Meeting in Ann Arbor, received 20 submissions. Cash awards were given to the top three entries, which were judged on the basis of creativity and innovation, display and presentation, and scientific and/or aesthetic value.

2009 Combustion Art Competition
	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)
	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 (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
	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)
	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
	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)
	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)
	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
	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)
	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)
	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)
	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)
	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
	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).
	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).
	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
	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)
	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 Baukan (John Zink Company)
	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)

Links

Here are some links to other sites of interest:

• The Combustion Institute
• Eastern States Section
• Western States Section

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, 11 are from academia, 5 are with government agencies, and 3 are from industry.

Officers & Chairpersons
Chair (2011)	I.S. Wichman	Michigan State University	(2013)
Chair-elect (2011)	N.G. Glumac	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	(2014)
Treasurer (2013)	T.E. Briggs, Jr.	Oak Ridge National Laboratory	(2013)
Secretary (2011)	R.D. Hancock	Wright-Patterson Air Force Base	(2011)
Past Chair (2011)	K.C. Midkiff	University of Alabama	(2011)
Arrangements Chair	O.A. Ezekoye	University of Texas at Austin	(2014)
Webmaster	C.E.A. Finney	Oak Ridge National Laboratory	(2014)
Auditor	M. Wooldridge	University of Michigan	(2014)
Program Chair	J.P. Seaba	ConocoPhillips Company	(2012)
Program Vice-Chair	A.K. Agrawal	University of Alabama	(2010)
Chair Emeritus	R.J. Priem
Chair Emeritus	T.P. Torda
Consultant	D.P. Stocker
At-Large Members
	J. Abraham	Purdue University	(2012)
	K. Brezinsky	University of Illinois at Chicago	(2010)
	S.A. Ciatti	Argonne National Laboratory	(2012)
	J.A. Drallmeier	Missouri University of Science and Technology	(2012)
	P.V. Ferrell	University of Wisconsin - Madison	(2012)
	H. Mongia	Purdue University	(2012)
	S.L. Olson	NASA Glenn	(2014)
	S. Singh	General Motors Technical Center	(2014)
	S. Wooldridge	Ford Motor Company	(2014)

Financial Sponsors

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

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

This page's URL is http://cssci.org/.
The site is maintained by C.E.A. Finney, and appropriate correspondence should be addressed to him.
This page first appeared 2002-06-06 and was last updated 2009-05-22.