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Fred E. C. Cluick S.B., S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1957; Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1961 1200 East California Boulevard | website
Research The research in Professor Culick's group is concerned primarily with problems associated with combustion and flow in propulsion systems. Currently the bulk of the work is devoted to various aspects of unsteady motions in combustion chambers, including combustion instabilities, with applications to solid and liquid rockets, ramjets, afterburners, and primary combustors for gas turbines. Professor Culick has been traditionally concerned with theory and experiment related to combustion dynamics and nonlinear acoustics, but recently the emphasis has been expanded to include influences of noise, problems relating to generation of nitrogen oxides, and active control of combustion dynamics. There is also interest in advanced space propulsion and general problems relating to spacecraft and space mission design, in collaboration with groups at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Professor Fred Culick is Principal Investigator of a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) involving researchers from eight other universities, seven Russian groups, several government laboratories, and representatives of the U.S. solid rocket industry. The theme of this program is investigation of the fundamental chemical and combustion properties of advanced energetic propellants and the dynamics of solid rocket combustors. The work at Caltech is devoted mainly to modeling the combustion dynamics of solid propellants and investigating the nonlinear behavior of unsteady motions in a combustor. For all types of chemical combustion systems, but especially for gas turbine combustors intended for use in stationary power generation, active feedback control of combustor dynamics is an active area of research worldwide. Problems with instabilities arise with operation of combustors close to the natural lean blow-out limit, an operating condition dictated by the mandated low levels of polluting emissions, notably nitrogen oxides. Our broad program in this area comprises theory and analysis, numerical simulation, and experimental work.
Selected Publications Pulsed Instabilities in Solid-Propellant Rockets (with V. Burnley and G. Swenson), AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power 11 (4), pp. 657-665, 1995 A Further Note on Active Control of Combustion Instabilities Based on Hysteresis (with G. Isella, C. Seywert and E. E. Zukoski), Combustion Science and Technology, 1996 A Note on Ordering Perturbations and the Insignificance of Linear Coupling in Combustion Instabilities, Combustion Science and Technology, 1997 Some Influences of Nonlinear Energy Transfer Between the Mean Flow and Fluctuations (with G. Isella), Second International Seminar on Intra-Chamber Processes, Combustion and Gas Dynamics of Dispersed Systems, Saint Petersburg, Russia, June 1997 Transient Combustion Responses of Homogeneous Propellants to Acoustic Oscillations in Axisymmetric Rocket Motors, 33rd AIAA/ASME/SME/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, Seattle, WA, 1997 Nonlinear Unsteady Motions and NOx Production in Gas Turbine Combustors (with G. Swenson and W. Pun), 11th Symposium on Combustion and Explosion, Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernogolovka, Russia, November 1996 Advanced Propulsion for Space Travel and Exploration (with F. Iinoya and H. Schoeyer), Third International Symposium on Space Propulsion, Beijing, People?s Republic of China, August 1997 |
