KU Engineering Professor Wins Award for Research into Turbulent Combustion

An assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Engineering is winner of a three-year, $450,000 grant from the U.S. Air Force for his work using data-science techniques to understand and model combustion physics and to help improve combustion devices’ performance and safety.

Cheng Huang received the award through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Young Investigator Research Program. The program, known as YIP, supports early-careers engineers and scientists who show “exceptional ability and promise” as they conduct basic research in science and engineering.

Huang’s research — “Generalizable Data-Driven Modeling Framework for Understanding and Modeling Turbulent Combustion” — involves energy, combustion and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Huang and his team use data and models to help boost the accuracy of combustion simulations for everything from traditional liquid rocket engines that launch satellites into space to scramjets that move hypersonic projectiles at more than five times the speed of sound.

The advanced modeling also can assist development of future propulsion systems such as rotating detonation engines, a promising alternative to traditional combustion.

The grant is helping Huang’s years of work get even further off the ground.

“This award allows me and my team to leverage the novel techniques originated from data sciences to inform accurate computational models to describe turbulent combustion physics at conditions that cannot easily be assessed and significantly improves our understanding of these challenging physics,” he said.

Huang’s lifelong fascination with aerospace helped fuel his graduate study in the field of computational modeling and aerospace propulsion. That led to developing data-driven models to fill stubborn gaps in traditional modeling, bringing a new approach to studying the extremes of heat, pressures, turbulence and chemical reactions present in combustion.

While traditional simulations have been limited to focusing modeling on either the small-scale or large-scale physics of combustion — through direct numerical simulations and large eddy simulations, respectively — Huang is working to leverage novel methods in data science to bring both aspects together, to draw a more comprehensive, accurate and efficient picture of the process.

“It can be applicable all the way from modeling a lighter to a rocket,” he said. “And it helps us to better understand, predict and use combustion to provide the power we need for many different applications.”

Such innovative thinking aligns with the mission of the YIP, considered among the most prestigious research awards that new faculty members can receive. Huang is among 58 scientists and engineers from 44 research institutions and businesses in 22 states to win a YIP award this year.

“Through the YIP, the Department of the Air Force fosters creative basic research in science and engineering, enhances early career development of outstanding young investigators and increases opportunities for the young investigators to engage in forwarding the DAF mission and related challenges in science and engineering,” said Ellen Robinson, YIP program manager.

Huang, who joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering in 2021, is confident that his team’s research will continue to help establish a promising path toward novel computation tools for combustion simulations. The grant is welcome recognition of their efforts.

“It is certainly an honor to receive this award,” Huang said. “More importantly, it promotes and raises the national profile of KU Aerospace Engineering and the School of Engineering.”