The simultaneous achievement of high efficiency, fuel flexibility, and low pollutant emissions has been a major goal in the recent development of advanced engines. Consequently, these advanced engines have been designed to operate at near-limit conditions (high pressures and low temperatures), where the critical combustion behaviors become dominated by combustion chemistry through complex interactions with thermo-fluid dynamics. Recent efforts to certificate emerging alternative (bio-) fuels and strict regulation on pollutant emissions also require comprehensive understanding of real fuel combustion.

Dr. Won’s research involves; 1) Combustion chemistry of real transportation fuels with the state-of-the-art current kinetic models to incorporate multi-species combustion chemistry, 2) Development of well-defined experimental platforms to investigate the role of combustion chemistry in near-limit combustion dynamics, where complicated turbulent-chemistry interactions can be fundamentally investigated, 3) Plasma-assisted combustion techniques, in which the near-limit combustion dynamics are manipulated by plasma, will be introduced based on the understanding of combustion chemistry, and 4) Development of novel combustion diagnostic techniques.