Bio: Dr. Noel Clemens holds the Clare Cockrell Williams Centennial Chair in Engineering in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst in 1985, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1986 and 1991, respectively. From 1991 to 1993 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Dr. Clemens began as an Assistant Professor at UT in 1993 and was promoted to full professor in 2005. He served as the Aerospace Engineering Department Chair from 2012 to 2019. He received the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award in 1995, the College’s Faculty Excellence Award in 1997, the award for “Outstanding Teaching by an Assistant Professor” in 1998, the ASE/EM Department Teaching Award in 2000, the Lockheed Martin Award for Excellence in Engineering Teaching in 2011, and the AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Award in 2022. He is a Fellow of both the AIAA and APS, and he served as Editor-in-Chief of Experiments in Fluids from 2009 to 2012. In 2024 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Abstract: In this seminar we will discuss some challenging experiments that have been conducted in the UT Austin 50 kW Inductively-Coupled Plasma (ICP) Torch. The ICP torch uses magnetic induction to heat gas flows to temperatures of about 6000 K at atmospheric pressure. Such torches are ideal for investigating the response of high-temperature materials because they heat the gas without electrode contamination, and so do not alter the gas-material chemistry. We will discuss experiments that have been conducted to help validate a large-scale simulation of the torch that is sponsored by the DOE PSAAP program, which includes particle image velocimetry in a cold-flow analog of the torch, and time-resolved emission spectroscopy. In addition, we will present recent results where the torch has been used to characterize the reacting boundary layer that forms when the torch plume is impinged on a graphite sample. Temperature and species profiles are obtained by using diagnostic techniques such as laser-induced fluorescence of CN, CO, O, and nanosecond CARS measurements of N2/CO ratio.