PhD position (M/F) : Flame acceleration and transition to detonation (FAsTD) in narrow channels

The PhD student will be based at the Pprime Institute at ENSMA.
The Pprime laboratory is a CNRS own research unit. Its scientific activity covers a wide spectrum from materials physics to mechanical engineering, including fluid mechanics, thermics and combustion.

The PhD student will work for the FAsTD project, an ANR JCJC grant within the DETO team (detonics). The research traditionally carried out within the team has a strong emphasis on experimental and numerical work. The team is nationally and internationally recognized in the scientific community and has state-of-the-art experimental facilities and numerical codes.

The CNRS, Pprime unit, based at Futuroscope, is recruiting a PhD student for the FAsTD project to carry out a thesis entitled : Flame acceleration and transition to detonation (FAsTD) in narrow channels.

The materialization of a hydrogen (H2) economy calls for a thorough practical and fundamental understanding of the risks associated with its production, storage and handling1. Accidental combustion events typically include a wide range of henomena such as ignition (shock-, thermally-, jet- or spark-induced), flame propagation and acceleration, flame-obstacle interactions, shock formation, shock-flame interactions, transitionto-detonation, and detonation propagation. They cover all possible flow regimes from laminar to turbulent, from diffusion driven (flames) to shock driven (detonations) combustion waves, with important physical and chemical processes occurring across more than six orders of magnitude in spatial and temporal scales. Among the phenomena listed above, deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) is the most fascinating! From a scientific point of view, DDT is an outstanding, physics-rich fundamental problem in combustion science. From a practical perspective, it is important to study and understand DDT in order to develop engineering correlations and simulation tools that can be applied to propulsion, and the prevention and mitigation of explosions.

The ultimate goal of the project is to facilitate the global energy transition by fostering the role of H2 while understanding, from a fundamental standpoint, the risks associated with its widespread use, in particular the risk of DDT in narrow geometries.
The strategy put forward for this aim is based on integration of novel experiments and visulization techniques, numerical simulations and mathematical analysis to give a clearer picture of the phenomenon.

The Ph.D student will come to support the experimental component of the ANR JCJC project FAsTD, and will have access to a unique facility in which the 3-D characterization of DDT is possible. While most of the successful candidate's time (80%) will be devoted to assessing the applicability of current velocity and gas temperature measurement techniques in DDT scenarios, she/he will also be expected to contribute to the development of experimentally informed numerical/mathematical models that provide complementary information that is difficult to obtain experimentally.

If you are in for an intellectually challenging and rewarding journey, Apply now!