Ramanarayanan Balachandran

About Professor 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

Ramanarayanan Balachandran is Professor of Energy Technologies at University College London – Department of Mechanical Engineering. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering (with distinction), from Madurai Kamaraj University, India and his Master’s research degree in Aerospace engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, for his research on pulse combustor and its application to spray evaporation and incineration. He subsequently joined Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED), received his PhD and also conducted post-doctoral research in the areas of combustion instabilities and laser diagnostics.

Professor Balachandran publishes his research outputs in international high impact conferences and journals. He has received number of national and international awards including 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.