Research Interests and Accomplishments

1.      Interests – He is senior author and co-author of over 190 papers, published on international journals and presented at national and international conferences. The overall focus of his research activity is on understanding the physical processes related to fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, energy conversion and combustion in thermal system design and optimizing such processes to improve performance in terms of higher efficiency, reduced emissions and lower costs. The current research interests can be summarized as follows: incompressible and compressible fluid mechanics, turbulent reacting flows, sprays, numerical analysis, direct numerical simulations as applied to internal combustion engines, marine applications, external flows such as aerofoils and internal flows such as in scramjets.

2.      Accomplishments – He has developed several software packages for research and industrial applications. Among them he has developed the REC (Reciprocating/Rotary Engine Combustion) code which is used in several universities in the USA, Europe and Japan. Updated versions of the code have been developed over a period of about 15 years. The code solves multidimensional, compressible, turbulent, multiphase reacting flows. He also wrote the FLEDS code which is used in several universities in USA, Australia and Europe. FLEDS is an HPC-3D parallel code written in Fortran 90 and it is fully portable and can run on large distributed and shared memory platforms. The code solves either LES or DNS equations for multidimensional, compressible, turbulent, multiphase reacting flows. He has also played a significant role in seeking funding support from the US Department of Defence, the National Science Foundation, the Indiana 21st Century Fund, ArvinMeritor Corporation, Caterpillar, John Deere, the US Navy and Purdue Research Foundation during his Visiting Professor appointments.

Professional Activities

Member of Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Member of Italian Thermotechnical Society (ATI). Reviewer of papers for:  Combustion and Flame, Physics of Fluids, International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat and Fluid Flow, International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Computers & Fluids, etc. He has participated as a member of scientific committee of several international conferences. Participant in the DOE (USA) program on DISC (direct-injection stratified-charge) engines. Consulting: Rotary Power International, FIAT, Cummins Engines, Arvin Meritor.

• (with D'Amato M. and Viggiano A.) "A Numerical Investigation on the Laminar Flame Speed of Methane/Air and Iso-octane/Air Mixtures with Ozone Addition," Combustion and Flame, Vol. 241, pp. 112145, ISSN: 0010-2180, 2022.
• (with Fiore M. and Viggiano A.) "Internal Combustion Engines Powered by Syngas: a Review," Applied Energy, Vol. 276, pp. 115415, ISSN: 0306-2619, 2020.
• (with Jebakumar A.S., Premnath K.N. and Abraham J.) "Fully Resolved Direct Numerical Simulations of Particle Motion in a Turbulent Channel Flow with the Lattice-Boltzmann Method," Computers & Fluids, Vol. 179, pp. 238-247, ISSN: 0045-7930, 2019.
• (with Yen M. and Abraham J.) "Modeling Soot Formation in Turbulent Jet Flames at Atmospheric and High-Pressure Conditions," Energy & Fuels, Vol. 32(8), pp. 8857-8867, ISSN: 0887-0624, 2018. 
• (with Ameen M.M. and Abraham J.) "An Evaluation of the Assumptions of the Flamelet Model for Diesel Combustion Modeling," Chemical Engineering Science, Vol. 138, pp. 403-413, ISSN: 0009-2509, 2015.
• (with Viggiano A.) "Dynamic Adaptive Chemistry Applied to Homogeneous and Partially Stratified Charge CI Ethanol Engines," Applied Energy, Vol. 113, pp. 848-863, ISSN: 0306-2619, 2014.
• (with Bonelli F. and Viggiano A.) "A Numerical Analysis of Hydrogen Underexpanded Jets under Real Gas Assumption," Journal of Fluids Engineering, Vol. 135, pp. 121101-1-11, ISSN: 0098-2202, 2013.
• (with Viggiano A.) "A Comprehensive Investigation on the Emissions of Ethanol HCCI Engines," Applied Energy, Vol. 93, pp. 277-287, ISSN: 0306-2619, 2012.
• (with Sayeed M. and Abraham J.) "Enhancing the Performance of a Parallel Solver for Turbulent Reacting Flow Simulations," Numerical  Heat Transfer Part B- Fundamentals, Vol. 59 (3), pp. 169-189, ISSN: 1040-7790, 2011.
• (with Owston R. and Abraham J.) "Some Numerical Considerations in the Simulation of Low-Ma Number Hydrogen/Air Mixing Layers", International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Vol. 35 (23), pp. 12936-12944, ISSN: 0360-3199, 2010.