Recent progress and challenges in fundamental combustion research

More than 80% of world energy is converted by combustion. Development of efficient next generation advanced engines by using alternative fuels and operating at extreme conditions is one of the most important solutions to increase energy sustainability. To realize the advanced engine design, the challenges in combustion research are therefore to advance fundamental understanding of combustion chemistry and dynamics from molecule scales to engine scales and to develop quantitatively predictive tools and innovative combustion technologies. This review will present the recent progresses and technical challenges in fundamental combustion research in seven areas including advanced engine concepts using low temperature fuel chemistry, new combustion phenomena in extreme conditions, alternative and surrogate fuels, multi-scale modeling, high pressure combustion kinetics, experimental methods and advanced combustion diagnostics Firstly, new engine concepts such as the Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), † Received: 2014-01-29; accepted: 2014-03-27; online: 2014-04-01 E-mail: [email protected] i te as: Yiguang Ju. Recent progress and challenges in fundamental combustion research. c © vances in Mechanics, 2014, 44: 2014 Advances in Mechanics.