Tanvir I. Farouk
Associate Professor,
Director of Reacting System and Advanced Energy Research (RASAER) Lab
University of South Carolina
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Tanvir Farouk is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of South Carolina, Columbia.
He received his MASc (2004) and PhD (2009) from University of Toronto and Drexel University respectively. His doctoral work on non-thermal plasma discharge earned him the prestigious National Science and Engineering Research council of Canada (NSERC) post-doctoral fellowship award. He was awarded the Irvin Glassman Young Investigator award by the Combustion Institute in 2013 for his work on “Cool Flames” and was invited to be a member of NASA’s Science and Definition for Microgravity Experiments from 2014 – 2016 and also serves in the panel on “Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space 2023-2032”. He was awarded the Young Investigator Award (2018) and Breakthrough Star Award (2016) from the University of South Carolina. In 2019 he was awarded the Ralph Teetor Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers. For his contribution to plasma treated surface functionalization of composites he received the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2020. His research has been supported by DARPA, DOE, DOD, NASA, NSF, Boeing and Holtec.
Email: tfarouk@sc.edu
Office: Room A121, 300 Main Street, University of South Carolina
Phone: 803-777-3380
FOLLOW
Area of Research
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Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It contains a significant portion of charged
particles – ions and/or electrons.
The presence of these charged particles is what primarily sets plasma apart from the other fundamental states of matter. It is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe, being mostly associated with stars, including the Sun. Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field. Low-temperature, non-equilibrium plasmas and gas discharges are incredibly reactive physicochemical systems and are formed by the application of high voltages. Plasma based technologies have had huge societal impact – they form the backbone of chip/semiconductor fabrication, are essential in critical fields of chemical analysis, are ubiquitous in consumer products such as lighting and plasma TV’s. Plasma technologies are also growing into new fields – biological remediation, environmental monitoring and even plasma medicine. In our research group, we develop models to understand the coupled physicochemical processes of a wide variety of plasma configurations and systems. We also design and conduct canonical experiments that serves as model validation targets. Active areas of interest include liquid phase plasma, plasma in multiphase, micro-plasmas, plasma sensors, plasma instabilities and application of plasmas in energy conversion.
High pressure micro-plasma in cavity configuration (right). Standing plasma waves in a low pressure nitrogen glow discharge plasma.
COMBUSTION
Internal combustion engines running on liquid fuels will remain the dominant prime movers for road and air transportation for decades, probably for most of this century.
The world’s appetite for liquid transportation fuels derived from petroleum and other fossil resources is already immense, will grow, will at some future time become economically unsustainable, and will become infeasible only in the very long term. Reduced emissions and high efficiency are the prime target for all combustion processes and is pushing combustion system/designs to operate at near limit conditions (e.g. high pressure, fuel lean etc.). The ongoing process of augmenting and eventually replacing petroleum-derived fuels with liquid alternative fuels must also achieve the projected high efficiency and low emission signatures and therefore requires fundamental. Quantitative predictions of fundamental combustion processes and their use for design of practical devices are difficult because in most cases simplifying models must be used to keep the computational efforts tractable. These models must capture the nonlinear behavior in chemical and physical processes and their interactions. However, our fundamental understanding of combustion in many areas is still inadequate to build such models for truly predictive capability. In our research group we develop reacting flow models for simulating multi-physics combustion phenomena. Current areas of interest include, “Cool Flames”, low and intermediate temperature combustion, NOx kinetics, supercritical hydrothermal flames.
Oscillatory Cool-Hot flame combustion for droplet combustion experiments conducted onboard the International Space
Station
THERMOFLUIDS
Thermofluid is the branch of science/engineering that deals with thermal energy and fluid flow, and involves a study of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics.
Heat transfer and energy management are critical for all technologies from the smallest to the largest. Anything will stop function if it gets too hot and therefore there should be an efficient way to cool things. In our group we develop
modeling platforms that allows us to simulate thermofluid system. Hi-fidelity multi-physics models as well as system level global model development are of interest. Active areas of interest include phase change driven heat transfer, thermal hydraulics associated with nuclear reactors.
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TARRYN CAMPBELL
Boston, USA
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