Ramanarayanan Balachandran

About Dr Ramanarayanan Balachandran

Ramanarayanan Balachandran’s research interests lie mainly in the areas of experimental combustion and multiphase flow applicable to internal combustion (IC) and gas turbine (GT) engines, in particular, on fuels and fuel additives; on spray formation, evaporation & combustion in diesel, gasoline IC engines and also in GT combustors; on combustion dynamics in GT combustors; on combustion in micro-engines; on development and application of space & time-resolved laser diagnostics for flow and flame; on alternative fuels; and on pollutant formation and mitigation.

Research Activities

• Combustion dynamics of turbulent swirl flames with hydrogen addition
• Development of Advanced Multi-Scalar Imaging for Combustion
• Effect of Fuel Addivities on Spray Formation and Evaporation
• Micro-Combustors and Micro-Reformers
• Multi-species LIF measurements in optical SI engines
• Transient dynamics of diesel sprays in high temperature and pressure conditions

Biography

Dr. Ramanarayanan Balachandran is Reader in Combusion Technologies at University College London. He obtained his Bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering (with distinction), from Madurai Kamaraj University, India, before joining IIT-Madras, India, from where he obtained his Masters degree based on his research at Department of Aerospace Engineering on pulse combustor and its application to spray evaporation and incineration. He subsequently joined the Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED) for his PhD studies and also conducted post-doctoral research in the areas of combustion instabilities and laser diagnostics.

Dr Balachandran publishes his research outputs in international high impact conferences and journals. He has received number of national and international awards such as Distinguished Paper on Turbulent Flames (2015) from the Combustion Institute, Sugden Award (2011) from the Combustion Institute British Section, Most Cited Author Award (2008) from Combustion and Flame (Elsevier Publications) and Instrumentation Award (2004) from Scientific Instrument Makers Company.

Rama Balachandran takes active participation in Institute of Physics (Combustion Physics Group) as the group Secretary. He currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Advances in Mechanical Engineering AIME (SAGE publications).