Air Force Center of Excellence

Welcome to the website for the Center of Excellence (CoE) on Multi-fidelity Modeling of Rocket Combustion Dynamics funded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

Accurate modeling of combustion dynamics in rocket engines remains a challenging problem characterized by extremely high-dimensional computations of non-linear and multi-scale physics. These difficulties are further complicating by the coupling between the flow dynamics, chemistry, and acoustics. The goal of the CoE is to advance the state-of-the-art in Reduced Order Models (ROMs) and enable efficient prediction of instabilities in liquid fueled rocket combustion systems.

The key outcomes of the CoE are the following:

1. Innovations in the science of reduced modeling of complex dynamical systems.

2. ROMs of variable/adaptive fidelity derived from an organized hierarchy of higher fidelity simulations.

3. Integration of ROMs into a multi-fidelity model that can predict the stability characteristics of a full-scale liquid rocket engine containing multiple injector elements.

4. Given a nominal engine configuration, a methodology that designers can use to efficiently characterize combustion dynamics and explore the effects of parametric changes on quantities of interest.

5. Engagement with AFRL researchers and exchange of knowledge, tools, and data.

This is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, UT Austin, Purdue and New York University.