New Argonne Initiative to Examine the Details of the Combustion Process

A complex system like an engine has many parameters that must be included in any reliable simulation. From fuel injectors to combustion chemistry, every part of the process of combustion has parameters with some level of uncertainty associated with them. These uncertainties are often extremely difficult for scientists to reduce. The field of uncertainty analysis provides the tools to investigate how parameter uncertainty influences simulation outcomes. A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is using a specific form of uncertainty analysis called global sensitivity analysis (GSA), which breaks down the uncertainty into constitute parts. Read more.