Profile

Prof Epaminondas MASTORAKOS

Principal Investigator

Epaminondas Mastorakos is the Hopkinson & Imperial Chemical Industries Professor of Applied Thermodynamics (1950) in Cambridge University's Engineering Department. He is also the Combustion Research Coordinator in the University Gas Turbine Partnership (UGTP) with Rolls-Royce. His research aims to provide theories and background knowledge for combustion physics, with focus on how flames behave in gas turbines and diesel engines.

Prof Mastorakos is a PI for the C4T programme with a focus on high-performance thermal management and waste heat recovery research for improved, i.e. cleaner and more efficient heat usage in energy conversion technologies.

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Cambridge

Researchers

C4T extended projects

Research Interest

His research revolves around simulations and experiments of many kinds of flames (gaseous or liquid fuels, premixed or non-premixed), and in particular on "flames at the limit". His focus is therefore on ignition and extinction phenomena that have a wide range of applications in modern low-emission engines. His work on simulations and simulation tools includes reduced chemical mechanism construction, laminar flames, Direct Numerical Simulations of turbulent flames, and RANS and LES simulations of non-premixed reacting flows with the Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) method. The CMC code is currently being used by various laboratories across the world.

On the experimental side, his work includes combustion in porous media for hydrogen production for fuel cells, auto-ignition and spark ignition of turbulent non-premixed flames, spray combustion, and blow-off of flames.

Key Publications

Google Scholar link

Smith, Jessie R., Savvas Gkantonas, and Epaminondas Mastorakos. 2022. ‘Modelling of Boil-Off and Sloshing Relevant to Future Liquid Hydrogen Carriers’. Energies 15 (6): 2046. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15062046.

Imhoff, Thomas Buckley, Savvas Gkantonas, and Epaminondas Mastorakos. 2021. ‘Analysing the Performance of Ammonia Powertrains in the Marine Environment’. Energies 14 (21): 7447. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14217447.

Pan, Kang, Mei Qi Lim, Markus Kraft, and Epaminondas Mastorakos. 2021. ‘Development of a Moving Point Source Model for Shipping Emission Dispersion Modeling in EPISODE–CityChem v1.3’. Geoscientific Model Development 14 (7): 4509–34. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4509-2021.

Trivedi, Shrey, Savvas Gkantonas, Yuri M. Wright, Matteo Parravicini, Christophe Barro, and Epaminondas Mastorakos. 2021. ‘Conditional Moment Closure Approaches for Simulating Soot and NOx in a Heavy-Duty Diesel Engine’. In , 2021-24–0041. https://doi.org/10.4271/2021-24-0041.

Epaminondas Mastorakos. 2009. 'Ignition of turbulent non-premixed flames'. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 35 (1): 57-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2008.07.002.

B.O. Ayoola, R. Balachandran, J.H. Frank, E. Mastorakos, C.F. Kaminski. 2006. 'Spatially resolved heat release rate measurements in turbulent premixed flames'. Combustion and Flame 144 (1-2): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2005.06.005.

R. Balachandran, B.O. Ayoola, C.F. Kaminski, A.P. Dowling, E. Mastorakos. 2005. 'Experimental investigation of the nonlinear response of turbulent premixed flames to imposed inlet velocity oscillations'. Combustion and Flame 143 (1-2): 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2005.04.009.

E. Mastorakos, T.A. Baritaud, T.J. Poinsot. 1997. 'Numerical simulations of autoignition in turbulent mixing flows'. Combustion and Flame 109 (1-2): 198-223. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-2180(96)00149-6.

Louge, M., Mastorakos, E., & Jenkins, J. (1991). The role of particle collisions in pneumatic transport. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 231, 345-359. doi:10.1017/S0022112091003427

Achievements

2022 Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
2020 The Gaydon Prize at the 38th International Combustion Symposium
2020 Best Paper at the ASME Turbo Expo
2019 The Sugden Award by the British Section of the Combustion Institute
2018 Fellow at the Combustion Institute: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2013 Associate Fellow at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics