Cornell researchers Cool and Gouldin receive Defense Department awards for equipment

Cornell University researchers Terrill Cool, professor of applied physics, and Frederick Gouldin, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, have been awarded research instrumentation grants from the Department of Defense (DoD)/U.S. Army.

The awards are among 242 to 99 academic institutions, totaling $45 million, announced by the DoD. The grants are made under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, which supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments or develops university capabilities to carry out cutting-edge defense research.

Cool has been awarded $56,430 to purchase equipment to upgrade his research team's vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser photo-ionization mass spectrometry (PIMS) facility. His team develops chemical kinetic models of complex combustion processes that occur in internal combustion engines, incinerators, and solid propellants. These models are used in the design of low-pollution incinerators and engines, as well as propellants with improved ignition properties. Model development depends on precise measurements of the concentrations of numerous combustion radicals and reaction intermediates in laboratory flames. The upgraded equipment will be used for these concentration measurements.

His Cornell laboratory has two major current projects. One, direct sampling of flame radicals detected by VUV/PIMS, yields species concentration data for the refinement of current models for the combustion of trinitrated nitrocellulose propellant. This newly developed technique also has been used to develop models for the incineration of chemical warfare agents and thermal destruction of hazardous chlorocarbon compounds. The second, resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization spectroscopic techni-ques, combined with jet-cooled molecular beam mass spectrometry, are under development for the continuous monitoring of toxic emissions from municipal and hazardous waste incinerators. Cool earned his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 1965 and joined the Cornell faculty in 1965 as an assistant professor, becoming a full professor in 1975.

Gouldin, who is associate director for undergraduate affairs of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell, has been awarded $140,700 to purchase a stereo particle imaging velocimetry (SPIV) system for studies of turbulent combustion processes.

SPIV is a newly developed, laser-based, optical method for measuring the velocity of a gas simultaneously at multiple locations in a plane. For these measurements, very small particles that scatter laser light are suspended in the combusting gas ßow to be studied. Their motions are tracked by taking a sequence of photographs of light scattered by the particles from a sheet of light formed by a pulsed laser beam. From these images particle and thereby gas velocities can be determined in much the same way that the moon's motion can be tracked through a sequence of photographs of the night sky.

Gouldin's research group is interested in the effects of ßow turbulence on combustion and especially on the structure of the dispersed, high-temperature reaction zones present in turbulent ßames. Recently, the group has developed a new imaging method -- laser-induced crossed-plane imaging -- for studying this impact. By combining this new imaging method with SPIV, the group will be able to study the relationship between the turbulence-induced changes in reaction zone structure as quantiÞed by crossed-plane imaging and the perturbing, turbulent velocity Þeld as measured by SPIV. The results of this research will help in the development of efÞcient, low-emission combustion systems for automobile engines, gas turbines and jet engines.

Gouldin earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1970, and joined the Cornell faculty the same year.

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