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We are located at California State University, Long Beach and are part of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. Our lab focuses on understanding the physical and chemical processes in the combustion and decomposition of energetic materials (e.g. propellants, thermites) as well as other solid fuels (e.g. metal particles). Most of the work focuses on missile propulsion and is closely tied to the Department of Defense and military applications. We employ advanced or new diagnostics that can probe within hostile environments produced by the combustion process. Optical, spectroscopic, and synchrotron x-ray diagnostics are used to understand these processes. While most of the research is experimental, some modeling and simulation efforts are used to complement the experimental results.
Previous work has studied high temperature spectral emissivity of metal oxide particles, ball milled boron/PTFE composites, and combustion of submicron CL-20 propellants. Recently, he has worked on applying synchrotron based x-ray diagnostics to unravel the low temperature decomposition mechanism of ammonium perchlorate, a common oxidizer, and was the first to use x-rays to make in situ measurements of aluminum agglomerates at motoring pressure.
