DLR - Institute of Combustion Technology

You are here: Home:Departments and Groups

Chemical Kinetics Department

Fuel flexibility, reducing pollutant emissions and increasing combustion efficiency, while simultaneously taking aspects of economic viability into account, is one of the greatest challenges in the development of novel combustion technologies. In recent years, modeling and simulation have proved to be excellent new tools for addressing these challenges. Experimental techniques in combination with numerical models are therefore applied rigorously by the Department to predict the reaction kinetics of combustion processes and the formation of pollutants for various gaseous and liquid fuels, and in this way to achieve progress in the optimization of combustion processes.

Computer Simulation Department

Numerical simulation of the physical and chemical processes in low-emission combustion chambers of aircraft engines or industrial gas turbines requires advanced computation methods. Reliably and accurately predicting pollutant formation, wall heat load, noise emission, as well as the stability and efficiency of combustion are the paramount aims of numerical simulation research.

Gas Turbines Department

The focal areas of research activities for the Gas Turbines Department are the development, design optimisation, construction and testing of gas turbine based power plant micro-systems and combustion systems for decentralised power and heating supply. Both the optimisation of existing systems and the development of new innovative system concepts are under consideration.

Combustion Diagnostics Department

Advanced laser-based measurement techniques provide new insights into physicochemical combustion processes. These techniques can visualise flame structures, detect flow relations in the combustion chamber, and can measure how the concentrations of combustion-relevant species are distributed and what temperatures are present.

Multiphase Flow and Alternative Fuels Department

In der Abteilung Mehrphasenströmung und Alternative Treibstoffe (MAT) werden numerische Methoden und Modelle hergeleitet und in Computercodes umgesetzt, um Mehrphasenströmungen zu simulieren und Vorhersagen treffen zu können. Hiermit wird die Entwicklung neuer Technologien in einer großen Bandbreite von Anwendungsgebieten unterstützt. Die Modellentwicklung basiert auf den Erkenntnissen und Validierungsdaten aus Grundlagenexperimenten, wie sie z.B. in enger Zusammenarbeit mit der Abteilung Verbrennungsdiagnostik entwickelt werden. Die in der Abteilung entwickelten Modelle werden in die Strömungslöser für reagierende turbulente Mehrphasenströmungen der Abteilung Computersimulation implementiert.

Chemical Analytics Group

The technical group chemical analytics is dealing with topics in the fields of (alternative) fuels, air pollutants, exhaust analytics and combustion chamber systems. Here, regular techniques of instrumental analysis are combined with self-developed methods, like, e.g. the molecular beam mass spectrometry (MBMS), and are applied for current technical and scientific challenges.

High-pressure Experiments Group

Combustor testing at relevant operation conditions (pressure, temperature, flow field) is still a key in gas turbine combustor development. The “High-pressure Experiments” group is therefore operating the optically accessible high-pressure combustor rig Stuttgart (HBK-S). The research work of the group is focused on fuel flexible gas turbine combustors.