Fundamentals of Turbulent Combustion

This online course describes the fundamental elements required to understand modern tools for combustion simulation. It covers the first six chapters of the textbook Theoretical and numerical combustion by Poinsot and Veynante. The course enables engineers and researchers to understand the physics of combustion and the various methods used to simulate it. It will allow students to understand modern simulation methods used to analyze laminar and turbulent flames.

Next sessions

Date: from Monday 7th April, 2025 to Sunday 25th May, 2025

Deadline for registration: 15 days before the starting date of each training

Before signing up, you may wish to report us any particular constraints (schedules, health, unavailability…) at the following e-mail address : training@cerfacs.fr

Price: students : 420 € – Cerfacs shareholders : 630 € – others : 840 € (Taxes not included)

Satisfaction index

In 2023, 95% of participants were satisfied or very satisfied (results collected from 42 respondents, out of 62 participants, a response rate of 65.8 %).

Context

Scientific content

The online course presents the fundamental concepts of combustion for students who already have a knowledge of fluid mechanics. The course is split in 6 weeks:

week 1: the place of combustion in today's and tomorrow's energy mix. The scientific challenges associated to combustion and to its simulation using CFD
week 2: the thermochemistry of combustion (how to compute adiabatic flame temperatures) and the conservation equations used to describe reacting flows
week 3: laminar premixed flames- phenomenology, theory and computations
week 4: diffusion flames – theories based on mixture fraction, comparison between premixed and diffusion combustion
week 5: turbulent combustion. Phenomenology, turbulent combustion diagram, turbulent flame speed, models for turbulent premixed flames
week 6: turbulent diffusion flames, models and physical description

An interactive live conference will close the session and will be held on week 6.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this training, you will be able to:

explain the fundamental mechanisms controlling flames,
identify flame regimes as well as the interactions of combustion with other mechanisms (turbulence, pollutant formation)
recognize the difficulties of CFD for reacting flows and the capacities of the various families of codes to tackle them

Organization

This is a fully online training session. It is divided into 7 consecutive weeks, based on learning activities delivered each week.

Week 1 to week 6 require around 2 to 3 hours of work per week. Learning activities are released on Monday of each week and you have 7 days to complete each week's activities. The 3 hours of work can be distributed over the week, depending on your schedule.
A 1 hour live interactive session will hold during week 7. This live session will deal with an applicative case. This live session will also be recorded.
Last week is dedicated to revising and a final exam, leading to a certificate of learning.

Our pedagogical principles

All our learning sessions are built upon evidence-based principles from cognitive psychology and learning research:

concepts first: the course is focused on conceptual understanding of the meaning of equations and how they apply in practical cases (Van Heuvelen, 1991).
active learning: the course is organized around activities especially designed to make participants interact between each other, involving a deep processing of the scientific content previously shown in short videos (Salmon, 2013).
long-term retention and transfer: because you need to apply what you will learn during this session in the future and in various contexts, our courses are designed using the 10 laboratory-tested principles drawn from cognitive psychology (Halpern and Hakel, 2003).

Be prepared to be engaged and to interact with a community sharing a common goal: learning the scientific content of this course.

Teaching methods

The training is an alternation of theoretical presentations and practical work. Multiple choice questions allow a continuous evaluation.

Requirements

While this course is not focused on mathematical aspects, you need to have a clear understanding of Navier-Stokes equations and all the associated mathematical tools. To verify that the prerequisites are satisfied, the following questionnaire must be completed. You need to get at least 75% of correct answers in order to be authorized to follow this online training session. The training takes place in English; level B2 of the CEFR is required.

Questionnaire 1 : https://forms.gle/9cn5mUeazYsKYbmp8

Register here

Evaluation of learning

A final exam will be conducted during the training.

Referent teacher

Jean-Christophe JOUHAUD

Realized with the assistance of the following researchers :

Dr. Thierry Poinsot

Thierry is research director at CNRS, working at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics of Toulouse and scientific advisor at CERFACS Toulouse. His topics of research cover both theoretical and numerical aspect of combustion. He is one of the two authors of the textbook Theoretical and Numerical Combustion.

Dr. Denis Veynante

Denis Veynante is research director at the EM2C laboratory (CNRS – CentraleSupélec). His research and teaching in energy physics focuses on turbulent combustion, most often in conjunction with the aeronautics and automotive industries. He is the other author of the textbook Theoretical and Numerical Combustion.

Dr. J-F. Parmentier

After getting his PhD in Fluid Mechanics working on modeling of two-phase gas-particle flows, he worked for a few years on thermo-acoustic instabilities in annular combustion chambers. Since 2014 he has oriented his research specifically on learning and teaching science using active learning methods.

Contact

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