Internal combustion Engines, Course

These lectures serve as a primer on the science of combustion, a key field of research for developing alternative fuels and the engines that will burn them. They constitute the core of a summer school lecture program organized by Princeton’s Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center (CEFRC) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office (ARO), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the ExxonMobil Corporation.

The program connects early career scientists with seasoned researchers in the field of combustion science. The courses for the 2012 session were (1) Combustion Theory, taught by Prof. Heinz Pitsch of RWTH Aachen University, (2) Combustion Chemistry, taught by Prof. Hai Wang of the University of Southern California, and (3) Internal Combustion Engines jointly taught by Prof. Timothy C. Lieuwen of Georgia Tech (on gas turbines) and Prof. Rolf D. Reitz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (on reciprocating engines). A fourth course was a five-day lecture series on “Frontiers of Combustion” intended to be an end-to-end broad overview. The topics covered were Combustion in a Global Environment Context, taught by Prof. Robert H. Socolow of Princeton University, New Developments in Combustion Technology, taught by Dr. George A. Richards of DOE-NETL, Alternative Fuels Including Biofuels, taught by Prof. William H. Green of MIT, Cyber-Combustion, taught by Dr. Jacqueline H. Chen of Sandia National Laboratories, and Nanoengineered Reactive Materials and Their Combustion and Synthesis, taught by Prof. Richard A. Yetter of Penn State University.

The videotapes of the lecture series were funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1237691. The CEFRC is directed by Chung K. Law, Robert H. Goddard Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.