Experimental and computational study of ignition and flame propagation in internal combustion engines

Abstract Chemically reacting flows such as those found in combustion in the earth's atmosphere, in hypersonic flow, or in chemical engineering are very important processes, but much less well understood than non-reactive flows because of the multiscale nature and complexity of the chemical processes involved. Only recently have methods been developed to generate the typically very large reaction mechanisms, to reduce them without substantial loss of information, to couple them with flow processes, and to verify computational results with the help of measurements by non-intrusive laser-based experimental methods. This is a particularly formidable task in the case of turbulent reacting flow. Some characteristic examples of combustion processes in internal combustion engines are presented here to demonstrate progress in this field.