AAE Associate Professor Li Qiao and PhD student Sayan Biswas were recently awarded first prize for artistic merit in the 2015 Combustion Art Competition. Biswas says the artwork, titled “Afrit (Arabian mythology) - The Fire Monster,” came out of their current research that focuses on developing advanced fuel efficient and emission free combustion system for gas engines. The piece was chosen from more than 50 artistic photos of different combustion events from national labs, space propulsion agencies, university research labs, automotive, and gas turbine industries. 

“Our intention behind taking part in the competition was to showcase our research to the combustion community in an artistic way,” says Biswas. “We felt a strong visual image of our combustion research could create a good first impression that would lead to further attention and curiosity from the combustion community.”

The work will be used by the Combustion Institute on its website and in brochures for the next two years to showcase turbulent premixed jet flames. The Combustion Art Competition was initiated in 2004 at the International Combustion Symposium in Chicago. The 2015 Combustion Art Competition was held at the 9th U.S. National Combustion Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Biswas is studying with Professor Qiao in the area of propulsion and aerodynamics. His research interests include experimental combustion, rocket propulsion, laser diagnostics, numerical combustion, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

Pictured is the winning entry from AAE Associate Professor Li Qiao and PhD student Sayan Biswas. "Afrit (Arabian mythology) - The Fire Monster" features high speed schlieren photography of pre-chamber generated turbulent jet ignition of lean CH₄/air - potential solution to ultra lean combustion. Devil's face is made of wrinkled turbulent flames. Horns are composed of two flame-jets from pre-chamber combustion. The hot puff on top of devil's head represents initiation of ignition in main combustion chamber. This image contains all three phases of prechamber generated jet ignition process, namely, the pre-chamber flame-jet, main chamber ignition point and flame propagation.”