Presenter: Dr. David Montgomery, National Laboratory of the Rockies

Title: From Molecules to Engines: Towards De-Risking the Certification Process of Synthetic Aviation Fuels Through Multiscale Modeling and Simulation

Abstract: ...This talk presents recent advances in the mathematical and computational modeling of multicomponent fuel sprays for aviation applications. Modern jet fuels contain hundreds of chemical species whose thermophysical properties influence mixture properties, evaporation rates, and combustor performance. I will describe a modeling framework developed within the Pele suite of combustion solvers that combines group-contribution methods for property prediction, multicomponent droplet evaporation models, and reduced-order descriptions of gas-phase chemistry. A dual-fidelity spray modeling approach couples detailed liquid-phase fuel descriptions with simplified gas-phase representations, enabling simulation of preferential vaporization while maintaining computational efficiency. Simulations of a lean premixed prevaporized aviation combustor demonstrate how these methods provide new insight into the spatial distribution of fuel components and their implications for combustor performance and soot formation.