MRI: Development of a 1.1-Second Drop Tower Apparatus for Fundamental Combustion and Fluid Dynamics Research

建议书编号CTS-0420845首席研究员：罗文大学A.J.Marchese这笔赠款用于开发一种新的落塔装置和相关仪器，使研究人员能够进行燃烧和流体动力学的基础研究。在大多数实际燃烧系统中，高温梯度与重力加速相结合会产生浮力诱导的对流，这使得实验变得复杂，掩盖了潜在的化学和扩散现象，并使这些系统的直接数值模拟变得非常困难。通过在降低重力的设备中进行实验，大大降低了浮力的作用，燃烧理论在最近几十年里取得了重大进展。虽然有几个设施可以有效地消除普遍存在的重力，但其中许多设施的操作费用非常昂贵(例如，轨道航天器、探空火箭、抛物线飞行器)和/或由于地理和进度限制(例如，降落塔)，许多研究人员并不总是容易获得这些设施。拟议中的落塔装置将由罗文大学的一个教职员工团队设计、建造和维护，他们在执行微重力燃烧和流体动力学实验方面拥有丰富的经验。罗文大学开发的落塔装置将使主要研究人员能够扩大他们在火焰传播、聚合物燃烧、液滴燃烧、热扩散和沸腾换热方面的研究计划。此外，该设施将提供给普林斯顿大学、德雷克塞尔大学、罗格斯大学、NJIT、特拉华大学和其他大学的研究人员使用。罗文大学目前有一个高质量的工程项目，强调本科水平的基于项目的学习，承诺在该大学建设这个设施，将进一步加强该地区研究生研究机构和本科工程机构之间的关系。

Proposal No. CTS-0420845Principal Investigator: A. J. Marchese, Rowan UniversityThis grant is for the development of a new drop tower apparatus and associated instrumentation that will enable researchers to perform fundamental studies in combustion and fluid dynamics. In most practical combustion systems, high temperature gradients combined with gravitational acceleration produce buoyancy-induced convective flows, which complicate experiments, obscure the underlying chemical and diffusive phenomena, and make direct numerical simulation of these systems exceedingly difficult. By performing experiments in reduced gravity facilities, which greatly reduce the role of buoyancy, significant advances in combustion theory have been accomplished in recent decades. While several facilities are available to effectively eliminate the ubiquitous presence of gravity, many of these facilities are exceedingly expensive to operate (e.g. orbiting spacecraft, sounding rockets, parabolic flight aircraft) and/or are not always readily available to many researchers due to geographical and scheduling limitations (e.g. drop towers). The proposed drop-tower apparatus will be designed, built and maintained by a team of faculty members at Rowan University who have substantial experience in performing microgravity combustion and fluid dynamics experiments. Development of a drop tower apparatus at Rowan University will enable the principal investigators to expand their research programs in flame spread, polymer combustion, droplet combustion, thermal diffusion and boiling heat transfer. Moreover, the facility will be made available to researchers at Princeton, Drexel, Rutgers, NJIT, University of Delaware and others. The commitment to build this facility at Rowan University, which currently houses a high-quality engineering program that emphasizes project-based learning at the undergraduate level, will further strengthen the relationship between graduate research institutions and undergraduate engineering institutions in the region.