(UCI). He received his Ph.D. degree (1985) from the University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis in combustion science. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sandia National Laboratories Combustion Research Facility until 1987, when he joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at UCI. Dr. Dunn-Rankin's research is primarily in combustion and energy, droplets and sprays, and applications of laser diagnostic techniques to practical engineering systems, with recent emphasis on miniature combustion systems and electrical aspects of flames. He has more than 300 technical publications and presentations in these fields, and he is a Board officer of both the International Combustion Institute and the Institute for the Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems.

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A review of turbine-burner research and some relevant background issues is presented. Previous work on thermal cycle analysis for augmentative combustion in the passages of the turbine on a turbojet or turbofan engine is discussed, identifying the potential for improvement in performance. Previous researches on reacting mixing layers in accelerating flows, flameholding in high-speed flows, and various types of compact combustors are reviewed. An overview is given of experimental and computational research at UCI on the use of cavities to stabilize flames in accelerating and turning flows. Some indications for optimizing the cavity design are presented. Effects of the cavity length and depth, injection orientation for fuel and air into the cavity, and Reynolds number magnitude are discussed. The needs for future work are identified.

This theoretical/computational and experimental study addressed the vital two-way coupling between combustion processes and fluid dynamic phenomena associated with schemes for burning liquid fuels in high-speed, accelerating, and turning transonic turbulent flows. A major motivation for this type of combustion configuration was the demonstrated potential for improvements in the performance of gas turbine engines via combustion in the turbine passages. This program addressed various fundamental issues concerning combustion in an axially and centrifugally accelerating flow. The major combustion challenge involved ignition and flameholding of a flame in the high-acceleration flow and the associated optimization of the injection of the fuel and some secondary air into a protected recirculation zone provided by a cavity. The objectives were to advance our understanding of liquid-fuel combustion in accelerating flows and thereby to contribute to the development of turbine-burner technology.

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