61069: Engineering scientist, natural scientist, chemist, physicist or similar (f/m/x) - Injector...

Area of research:

Scientific / postdoctoral posts

Job description:

The Institute of Combustion Technology is an international renown research facility in the field of combustion science. It hosts approximately 80 scientists from various fields of specialization and addresses research for modern gas turbines. This thermal energy conversion is key for the energy transition policy – with sustainable energy carriers as, for example, hydrogen. In aviation, synthetic aviation fuels are without alternative beyond mid-range distances. Modern low-emission gas turbine technology, exported to the world, can contribute to climate neutral industry on a global scale. Our Institute can support this development with the competence fields computer simulation, chemical kinetics and analytics, combustion diagnostics, mass spectrometry, multi-phase flow and high-pressure combustion. Current research topics are instationary combustion, pollutant formation, spray combustion, alternative fuels and innovative combustor systems, operated with synthetic fuels and hydrogen. Detailed understanding of fuel properties of those alternatives compared to conventional fuels is a prerequisite for their production and utilization. Our Institute targets fundamental research and transfers results to technical application. Your position is assigned to the department „Combustor Systems and Diagnostics“, which is a team of 15 researchers exploring innovative technologies for energy conversion. For this purpose we employ generic spray and combustion experiments on the one hand, and complex experiments under high pressure conditions on the other hand. Our tasks span the full range from designing the experiments over optimization and operation. Important tools in this context are various laser-based diagnostics which we adopt to the conditions of interest. This serves to resolve details of the complex sub-processes governing combustion for thermal use of different energy carriers. The activities include data evaluation and combination of measurement data from various sources. These data are used to optimize combustor geometries for application of alternative liquid fuels or hydrogen, e.g. addressing the reduction of pollutants’ emissions. The resulting accurate data set also serves for validation of complex combustion models which are developed in our neighboring departments who in turn support our combustor development with their expertise. Our developed and optimized innovative combustor concepts target technical combustion applications. Your activities are assigned to the full range of those described tasks. You will be responsible for the following tasks:

• You optimize the design of injector and combustion concepts which have been developed in our institute with focus on alternative liquid fuels and perform tests at atmospheric and high-pressure conditions.
• For this purpose, you study spray phenomena at non-reacting and reacting conditions, derive detailed insight into spray atomization and investigate the impact on the subsequent turbulent combustion process.
• You contribute to the elucidation of the mechanism of spray-flame interaction and flame stabilization.
• You employ different laser-based diagnostics to characterize spray atomization under non-reacting and reacting conditions, and the respective flow field at atmospheric and high-pressure conditions. You adopt the existing data analysis codes as required.
• You evaluate and interpret the results and present these within the project, on conferences and in publications.
• With your derived results you contribute to the optimization of innovative combustion concepts for liquid fuel combustion at technical conditions within our interdisciplinary team. This requires interaction with the different competences from our institute, i.e. laser spectroscopy, chemistry, engineering and combustion modelling. 
• Further use of the derived know-how from the DLR-internal project into other national and international projects is expected. 

This research center is part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. With more than 42,000 employees and an annual budget of over € 5 billion, the Helmholtz Association is Germany's largest scientific organisation.