This section list awards bestowed by the Section.
The Combustion Art Competition was initiated in 2004 at the Combustion
Symposium in Chicago, and this inaugural event received 40 submissions of
outstanding quality. The winning entries from all years are displayed
below.
All images are displayed with permission of the copyright holders. Click on
the image for a larger version.
The 2009 Combustion Art Competition, held at the Sixth U.S. National
Combustion Meeting in Ann Arbor, received 20 submissions. Cash awards were given to the top three entries, which were judged on the basis of creativity and innovation, display and presentation, and scientific and/or aesthetic value.
| 2009 Combustion Art Competition |
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First Place — “Fire's
Ribbons and Lace” “The delicate and fractal
nature of charring cellulose is amplified here in repeated magnified images
of a flame spread front over ashless filter paper.”
Sandra Olson (NASA Glenn Research Center), Fletcher Miller
(San Diego State University), Indrek Wichman (Michigan State
University)
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Second Place (tie) — “The
Devil's in the Small-Scale Details” “The
research around the picture involves predicting the flame spread on
warehouse fires using small-scale cone calorimet er data. The image shows a
test performed on the cone calorimeter in which 2 cardboard cells are set
up and free burned to better understand the burning characteristics of a
larger packed commodity box. The outer shell of the box is corruga ted
cardboard and the fuel inside consists of polystyrene cups. The image shows
the polystyrene burning after the front face of cardboard has burned
away. The mass loss rate from the tests is then used to predict flame
spread on large 30-40 foot stacks of boxes stored in warehouses.”
Kristopher Overholt (Worchester Polytechnic Institute)
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Second Place (tie) — “Man
Makes Fire, Fire Makes Man” “This short exposure
photograph of a non-premixed turbulent jet flame of ethylene burning in
quiescent air captures detac hed flamelets with an eerily human form.”
Scott Skeen (Washington University in St. Louis)
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Special Recognition —
“Swirl-Stabilized Flame Enclosed by Porous Inert
Media” “Swirl-stabilized flame enclosed by
porous inert media (PIM). PIM stabilized portion of the flame experiences
flashback and the flame gradually stabilizes within the PIM.”
Daniel Sequera and Ajay Agrawal (University of Alabama)
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| 2008 Combustion Art Competition |
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First Place — “HALO
Burner” “Photo of a new ultra-low NOx process
burner firing a refinery fuel gas mixture in a relatively cold test furnace
at a low firing rate. The burner incorporates some advanced aerodynamic
mixing techniques and is called the HALO burner because of the ceramic ring
at the outlet.” Chuck Baukal (John Zink Company)
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Second Place — “Outdoor
Candle” “A candle structure includes a candle
body and a plurality of wicks. The candle body is configured with a top
and bottom surface, and an outside wall that tapers substantially inward
from the top surface to the bottom surface. The plurality of wicks is
configured to supply stable preheated air through the gaps of standing
wicks that protrude from the top surface of the candle structure. The
plurality of wicks extends above the body and the wicks are aligned
longitudinally. The plurality of wicks is arranged radially to taper
outward toward the bottom surface of the candle body such that a flame is
produced when the wicks are ignited. An air channel is configured to
supply stable preheated air to a base of the flame, the air channel
extending through the plurality of wicks and being graduated so that the
flow of air through the air channel is substantially laminar. A heat
conductive rod extending downward from a top of the air channel, wherein
the heat conductive rod is configured to increase the temperature of and
lower the air pressure of the air at the top of the air channel. It
further maintains stable preheated air supply to the base of the flame. As
a result, the flame is larger with less smoke and unburned fuel, stronger
and less susceptible to air disturbances such as wind. When the wind gets
strong, the adequately warmed air, passing through the air channel,
increases. It increases the strength of the flame. The stronger the wind
blows, the tougher the flame stands without smoke.”
Susumu Matsuyama (Almond Lamp Company)
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Third Place — “Centerbody
Flames” “The images shown are photographs of
ethylene/air/nitrogen diffusion flames stabilized behind a bluff
centerbody. The two images on the top show the centerbody flame
photographed from the side (top left) and top views (top right). The blue
regions are associated with the flame front and the other colors of the
flame are largely due to blackbody radiation from the soot. The intense
yellow radiation is from soot trapped in a tight ring vortex downstream of
the stabilizing bluff body. The motion of the soot trapped in the vortex
can be seen in the longer exposure photograph taken from the top.
The bottom two images are of a centerbody flame with the same inlet flow
velocities as the case shown above but with higher nitrogen content in the
feed gases. The image on the lower left shows a blue ring flame that forms
around the main flame immediately downstream of the centerbody. This blue
ring flame exhibits a slight oscillation in the vertical direction. The
image on the lower right shows the region downstream of the ring flame for
the same conditions. The disturbances in the downstream region of the
flame are amplified as it passes through the tube, resulting in the large
structures shown in the short exposure (0.8 ms) photo.”
Scott Stouffer, Garth Justinger (University of Dayton Research
Institute), Mel Roquemore, Amy Lynch, Vince Belovich, Joe Zelina, Jim Gord
(Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base), Keith
Grinstead, Vish Katta and Kyle Frische (Innovative Scientific Solutions
Incorporated)
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| 2007 Combustion Art Competition |
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First Place — “Soot Spirals
in a Laminar Flame” “In a nonpremixed jet flame
formation of soot takes place within the flame zone. While soot particles
are transported away from the flame zone they experience Newtonian,
thermophoretic, and pressure forces induced via particle-fluid
interaction. These forces in a centerbody flame produce a spectacular
spiraling motion for the soot particles. Traces of soot particles (green)
are visualized in the experiment by shining a YAG laser sheet. Radiation
from soot (orange) and emission from excited CH radicals (blue) are also
captured in the direct photograph of the laboratory flame. Calculations for
this flame are performed using UNICORN code. Trajectories of the soot
particles are shown in green, soot radiation is shown in orange and CH
concentration is shown in blue. Soot particles originating at the flame
surface are moving toward the center of the primary recirculation zone in a
helical pattern. Some soot particles are also entering the secondary
recirculation zone.” Scott Stouffer, Viswanath Katta,
William Roquemore, Garth Justinger, Vincent Belovich, Amy Lynch, Joe
Miller, Robert Pawlik, Joseph Zelina, Sukesh Roy, Keith Grinstead and James
Gord (Air Force Research Laboratory, Propulsion Directorate, Wright
Patterson Air Force Base)
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Second Place — “The Almond
Flame” “A dual cylinder wick lamp creates a flame
inside an outer flame. The flame of the picture uses 91% rubbing isopropyl
alcohol has a burning, vacuum column surrounded by a pink layer and a blue
layer cylinder flame. The vacuum column holds the flame perimeter toward
the center. The warm air flow through a heated almond flower surrounds the
flame to improve the combustion of the outer flame and protect the outer
flame from the wind. When the wind gets strong, the adequately warmed air,
passing through the air channels in the center and between the cylinder
wicks, increases. It increases the strength of the flame and results
smokeless from the flame under windy conditions. The stronger the wind
blows, the tougher the flame stands. This Almond Flame shows clean laminar
flow offers steady purification, and strength under windy conditions offers
unlimited fortune.” Susumu Matsuyama (Almond Lamp
Corporation)
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Third Place — “Spherical
Ethylene Diffusion Flame in Microgravity” “This
is an image of a spherical diffusion flame of ethylene burning in air in
the NASA GRC 2.2 s drop tower. The image was recorded about 1.4 s after
ignition. The ethylene flowrate is 1.5 mg/s and the scale is revealed by
the 6.5 mm porous sphere visible in the image. The image was recorded using
a Nikon D100 digital single-lens reflex camera with a 125 ms
exposure.” P.B. Sunderland (University of Maryland),
D.L. Urban and D.P. Stocker (NASA Glenn Research Center), B.H. Chao
(University of Hawaii) and R.L. Axelbaum (Washington University)
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Fourth Place
“CH* chemiluminescence imaging of cylindrical
detonations in an C2H2 + O2
mixture. Successive detonations were initiated at the center
points in a manner described in Cetegen, B. M., Crary, F. L. and
Dabora, E. K., 'The interaction of periodically generated
cylindrical detonations in a simulated hypersonic flow,'
Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Vol. 28, pp. 629-635,
2000.” Baki Cetegen, Lynwood Crary and Eli
Dabora (University of Connecticut)
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Fifth Place — “Diesel
Jets” “The picture shows simultaneous planar
images of the soot (red) and OH-radical (green) distributions in combusting
diesel fuel jets at various stages of development. They were acquired in
an optically accessible diesel engine using overlapping laser sheets for
planar laser-induced incandescence (PLII) of the soot and planar
laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) of the OH. The two simultaneous images
were acquired using two intensified CCD cameras, false-colored to show the
soot in red and OH in green, and then superimposed to form a single image.
These images were acquired as part of an ongoing study of in-cylinder
processes in diesel engines to reduce emissions and improve the efficiency
of these engines.” John Dec (Sandia National
Laboratories) and Dale Tree (Brigham Young University)
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| 2006 Combustion Art Competition |
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First Place — “Microflame
Sunflower” “This montage was inspired by the
natural patterns seen in sunflowers. The seeds in a sunflower are separated
by the Golden Angle, which produces what looks like simultaneous spirals in
both directions around the middle of the sunflower. In addition, the number
of spirals and petals on a sunflower are always one of a number in the
Fibonacci series (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55). This pattern is a
re-occurring theme in nature (seashells, pinecones, etc...). We chose this
pattern to represent our progress in microcombustion, as we spiral in to
find the smallest possible flame. We also wanted the montage to represent
the now flowering topic of microcombustion.” Ben Mellish
and Fletcher Miller (National Center for Space Exploration Research); Dan
Dietrich and Pete Struk (NASA Glenn Research Center); James T'ien (Case
Western Reserve University).
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Second Place “In
this color schlieren image, methane/air flames are seen as small vertical
elements being emitted from a burner at the center of the image. The
flames impinge on a 25 cm diameter cylinder mounted 10 mm above the burner
surface. the cylinder is rotating in a counterclockwise direction at 5.5
meters/sec. This configuration is important in the flame treatment of
plastic films by altering the film surface in preparation for
printing.” Colleen Stroud, Melvyn Branch and Jean
Hertzberg (University of Colorado, Boulder).
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Third Place — “Radiation
Demon” “Radiative heat flux contours on a
tunnel wall from a three-dimensional flame spread model. Contours modified
with nonlinear color map and some image processing.”
Ioan Feier (Case University).
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| 2004 Combustion Art Competition |
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First Place
“Low-speed opposing jets of fuel (top) and air (bottom) formed a flat
laminar diffusion flame. As the jet velocities are increased a weak
turbulent flame is generated. Velocity and particle fields are superimposed
on temperature distribution on the left and right halves of the picture,
respectively. Particles injected from fuel and air jets are shown with
black and white dots, respectively. Jet instabilities generated vortices,
which; in turn, enhanced mixing and broadened the reaction zone. The
laminar flame at the center is extinguished and the turbulent flame in the
wings is stabilized. Turbulent fluctuations are evident in the velocity
field and the associated vortical structures are evident in the particle
field. Simulations are performed using UNICORN code.”
Viswanath Katta, Terry Mayer, James Gord and William Roquemore
(Wright Patterson Air Force Base)
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Second Place
“This is a photo of a full scale flare being tested at sunset at the
John Zink R&D Test Center in Tulsa, OK.” Chuck Baukan
(John Zink Company)
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Third Place “All
four flames involve methane/oxygen/nitrogen diffusion flames at 1 bar in
the NASA Glenn 2.2 second drop tower. The flame at upper left involves
oxygen flowing into 28% (by volume) methane and has unusual pink
coloration. The flame at upper right involves methane flowing into 40%
oxygen and has large bright soot agglomerates. The flame at lower left
involves oxygen flowing into 30% methane and has a bright soot halo outside
of the flame sheet. The flame at lower right involves methane flowing into
air and has a soot shell well inside of the flame sheet.”
Jason Taylor (National Center for Microgravity Research) and Richard
Axelbaum (Washington University)
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