Chung K. (Ed) Law
Princeton University
Seminar Information
Hybrid: In Person & Zoom (connection in link below)
Engineering Building Unit 2 (EBU2)
Room 479
Seminar Recording Available: Please contact seminar coordinator, Jake Blair at (j1blair@ucsd.edu)
Combustion, the engine that sustains civilization, is the study of chemically reacting flows. In order to assure its continuing robustness, it is imperative that advances be made not only at the fundamental levels of fluid mechanics and chemical kinetics, but they should also be extended to other disciplines canonically sharing similar foundational concepts. In this seminar I shall present three problems describing different aspects of combustion, namely: (1) Collision, coalescence and bouncing of two droplets, as a fluid mechanics problem; (2) Kinetics and limits of explosion, as a chemical kinetics problem; and (3) Propagation and morphology of expanding flames, as a coupled reacting flow problem. For each topic I shall also cite some transdisciplinary examples.
Chung K. Law received his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the University of California at San Diego in 1973, and currently is the Robert H. Goddard Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and the Honorary and Founding Director of the Center for Combustion Energy at Tsinghua University, China. His research interests cover various physical and chemical aspects of fundamental combustion phenomena, with applications to propulsion, energy, fuels and the environment, as reported in over 600 journal articles. For his research contributions he has been honored with a number of professional awards. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of several professional organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a former president of the Combustion Institute.