Photo of Yuan Xuan

Yuan Xuan

Associate Professor

Affiliation(s):

  • Mechanical Engineering

105 Research Building East

yux19@psu.edu

814-865-2165

Personal or Departmental Website

Research Areas:

Energy Systems; Thermal/Fluid Sciences

Interest Areas:

Computational fluid dynamics, turbulent combustion, soot formation, numerical methods, uncertainty quantification.

 
 

 

Education

  • BS, Mechanical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique, 2010
  • MS, Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2011
  • MS, Mechanical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique, 2011
  • Ph D, Aeronautical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2014

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Colin Banyon, Matthew J Montgomery, Hyunguk Kwon, Alan L Kastengren, Lisa D Pfefferle, Travis Sikes, Yuan Xuan, Charles S McEnally and Robert Tranter, 2023, "Temperature measurements in heavily-sooting ethylene/air flames using synchrotron x-ray fluorescence of krypton", Combustion and Flame, pp. 112494
  • Gen Pei, Yuan Xuan, Glenn Morrison and Donghyun Rim, 2022, "Understanding ozone transport and deposition within indoor surface boundary layers", Environmental Science and Technology, 56, (12), pp. 7820-7829
  • Matthew J Montgomery, Hyunguk Kwon, Alan L Kastengren, Lisa D Pfefferle, Travis Sikes, Robert Tranter, Yuan Xuan and Charles S McEnally, 2022, "In situ temperature measurements in sooting methane/air flames using synchrotron x-ray fluorescence of seeded krypton atoms", Science Advances, 8, (17), pp. eabm7947
  • Jihang Li, Hyunguk Kwon, Drue Seksinsky, Daniel Doleiden, Jacqueline O'Connor, Yuan Xuan, Michel Akiki and James Blust, 2022, "Describing the Mechanism of Instability Suppression Using a Central Pilot Flame With Coupled Experiments and Simulations", Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power, 144, (1), pp. 011015
  • Hyunguk Kwon and Yuan Xuan, 2021, "Pyrolysis of bio-derived dioxolane fuels: A ReaxFF molecular dynamics study", Fuel, 306, pp. 121616
  • Aditya Lele, Hyunguk Kwon, Karthik Ganeshan, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2021, "ReaxFF molecular dynamics study on pyrolysis of bicyclic compounds for aviation fuel", Fuel, 297, pp. 120724
  • Yash G Shah, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2021, "An a priori analysis of the structure of local subfilter-scale species surrounding flame fronts using direct numerical simulation of turbulent premixed flames", Physics of Fluids, 33, (4)
  • Paulo Paes, James G Brasseur, Yuan Xuan and Yash G Shah, 2021, "Fourier-Physical Space Coherent Structure in Flame-Vortex Interactions Relevant to Premixed Turbulent Combustion using a New Signal Periodization Procedure", AIP Advances, 11, (4), pp. 045006
  • Matthew J Montgomery, Jochen Dryer, Hyunguk Kwon, Yuan Xuan, Charles S McEnally and Lisa D Pfefferle, 2021, "Effect of ammonia addition on suppressing soot formation in methane co-flow diffusion flames", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 38, (2), pp. 2497-2505
  • Brian D Etz, Gina M Fioroni, Richard A Messerly, Mohammad J Rahimi, Peter C St. John, David J Robichaud, Earl Christianson, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle, Yuan Xuan, Shubham Vyas, Robert S Paton, Seonah Kim and Robert L McCormick, 2021, "Elucidating the chemical pathways of soot precursor formation during combustion of 1- and 2-phenylethanol", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 38, (1), pp. 1327-1334
  • Yash G Shah, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2020, "Assessment of disparities in estimating filtered chemical reaction rates in LES using DNS of turbulent premixed flames", Combustion Theory and Modeling, 24.6, pp. 1179-1194
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Simon Lapointe, Kuiwen Zhang, Scott W Wagnon, William J Pitz, Junqing Zhu, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2020, "Sooting tendencies of 20 bio-derived fuels for advanced spark-ignition engines", Fuel, 276, pp. 118059
  • Simon Lapointe, Hyunguk Kwon, Yuan Xuan and Russel A Whitesides, 2020, "A computationally-efficient method for steady-state flamelet calculations", Combustion and Flame, 221, pp. 94-102
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Aditya Lele, Junqing Zhu, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2020, "ReaxFF-based molecular dynamics study of bio-derived polycyclic alkanes as potential alternative jet fuels", Fuel, 279, pp. 118548
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Brian D Etz, Matthew J Montgomery, Richard A Messerly, Shubham Vyas, Adrianus C van Duin, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle, Seonah Kim and Yuan Xuan, 2020, "Reactive Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Quantum Chemistry Calculations To Investigate Soot-Relevant Reaction Pathways for Hexylamine Isomers", The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 124, (1), pp. 4290-4304
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Sharmin Shabnam, Adrianus C van Duin and Yuan Xuan, 2020, "Numerical simulations of yield-based sooting tendencies of aromatic fuels using ReaxFF molecular dynamics", Fuel, 262, pp. 116545
  • Yuan Xuan, Abhishek Jain, Ro Lofti, N Nayir, Yuanxi Wang, Tanu Chatterjee, Samuel Wright, Joan M Redwing, Vincent H Crespi and Adrianus C van Duin, 2019, "Multi-scale modeling of gas-phase reactions in metal-organic chemical vapor deposition growth of WSe2", Journal of Crystal Growth, 527, pp. 125247
  • Simon Lapointe, Yuan Xuan, Russel A Whitesides and Matthew J McNenly, 2019, "A scaling analysis for the evolution of small-scale turbulence eddies across premixed flames with implications on distributed combustion", Combustion Theory and Modeling, 24, (2), pp. 307-325
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Abhishek Jain, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Numerical investigation of the pressure-dependence of yield sooting indices for n-alkane and aromatic species", Fuel, 254, (1), pp. 115574
  • Abhishek Jain and Yuan Xuan, 2018, "Effects of large aromatic precursors on soot formation in turbulent non-premixed sooting jet flames", Combustion Theory and Modeling, 23, (3), pp. 439-466
  • Anand Makwana, Abhishek Jain, Milton Linevsky, Suresh Iyer, Robert J Santoro, Thomas Litzinger, Yuan Xuan and Jacqueline O'Connor, 2018, "Experimental and numerical investigation of effects of premixing on soot processes in iso-octane co-flow flames", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 37, (1), pp. 1031-1039
  • Chowdhary Ashraf, Sharmin Shabnam, Abhishek Jain, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2018, "Pyrolysis of fuel mixtures at supercritical conditions: a ReaxFF molecular dynamics study", Fuel, 235, (1), pp. 194-207
  • Abhishek Jain, Dj D Das, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2018, "Experimental and numerical study of variable oxygen index effects on soot yield and distribution in laminar co-flow diffusion flames", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 37, (1), pp. 859-867
  • Charles S McEnally, Yuan Xuan, Peter St. John, Dj D Das, Abhishek Jain, Seonah Kim, Thomas A Kwan, Lance K Tan, Junqing Zhu and Lisa D Pfefferle, 2018, "Sooting tendencies of Co-Optima test gasolines and their surrogates", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 37, (1), pp. 961-968
  • Paulo Paes and Yuan Xuan, 2018, "Numerical investigation of turbulent kinetic energy dynamics in chemically-reacting homogeneous turbulence", Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, 101, (3), pp. 775–794
  • Chowdhary Ashraf, Abhishek Jain, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2017, "ReaxFF based molecular dynamics simulations of ignition front propagation in hydrocarbon/oxygen mixtures under high temperature and pressure conditions", Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 19, (7), pp. 5004-5017
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2016, "Two-dimensional flow effects on soot formation in laminar premixed flames", Combustion and Flame, 166, (1), pp. 113-124
  • Nicholas Burali, Simon Lapointe, Brock Bobbit, Guillaume Blanquart and Yuan Xuan, 2016, "Assessment of the constant non-unity Lewis number assumption in chemically-reacting flows", Combustion Theory and Modeling, 20, (4), pp. 1-26
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2015, "Effects of aromatic chemistry-turbulence interactions on soot formation in a turbulent non-premixed flame", Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 35, (2), pp. 1911-1919
  • Bruno Savard, Yuan Xuan, Brock Bobbit and Guillaume Blanquart, 2015, "A computationally-efficient, semi-implicit, iterative method for the time-integration of reacting flows with stiff chemistry", Journal of Computational Physics, 295, (1), pp. 740-769
  • Sidhartha Verma, Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2014, "An improved bounded semi-Lagrangian scheme for the turbulent transport of passive scalars", Journal of Computational Physics, 272, (1), pp. 1-22
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2014, "A flamelet-based a priori analysis on the chemistry tabulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in non-premixed flames", Combustion and Flame, 161, (6), pp. 1516-1525
  • Yuan Xuan, Guillaume Blanquart and Michael Edward Mueller, 2014, "Modeling curvature effects in diffusion flames using a laminar flamelet model", Combustion and Flame, 161, (5), pp. 1294-1309
  • Yuan Xuan and G. Blanquart, 2013, "Numerical modeling of sooting tendencies in a laminar co-flow diffusion flame", Combustion and Flame, 160, (9), pp. 1657-1666
  • Ga-Un Jeong, Adrianus C van Duin and Yuan Xuan, , "Exploring Gas Phase Chemical Reactions in NH3/B2H6 Systems for Chemical Vapor Deposition Using Reactive Molecular Dynamics", Journal of Physical Chemistry

Conference Proceedings

  • Charles S McEnally, Colin Banyon, Alan L Kastengren, Hyunguk Kwon, Matthew J Montgomery, Lisa D Pfefferle, Travis Sikes, Robert Tranter and Yuan Xuan, 2023, "In-situ x-ray diagnostics for mixing and temperature in co-flow non-premixed flames", Proceedings of the 13th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Pratikshya Mohanty, Saarthak Gupta, Santosh Hemchandra, Yuan Xuan and Jacqueline O'Connor, 2023, "Impact of a Central Pilot Jet on the Flow Oscillations of a Swirl-Stabilized Flame", ASME 2024 Turbomachinery Technical Conference & Exposition
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Matthew Montgomery, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Reactive molecular dynamics simulations of the yield sooting indices of nitrogenated hydrocarbons", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Junqing Zhu, Hyunguk Kwon, Yuan Xuan, Charles S McEnally and Lisa D Pfefferle, 2019, "Experimental and theoretical study of the soot forming tendencies of furans as potential biofuels", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Paulo K.L Paes, Yash G Shah, Yuan Xuan and James G Brasseur, 2019, "Dynamically dominant inter-scale couplings in the nonlinear chemical source terms for species evolution in premixed 6 turbulent combustion with application to LES modeling", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Seonah Kim, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Soot precursor formation from oxygenated aromatics: how oxygen functionality alters organic reaction pathways", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Kuiwen Zhang, Scott Wagnon, William J Pitz, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "A numerical study on the sooting tendencies of Co-Optima bio-derived blendstocks", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Matthew Montgomery, Hyunguk Kwon, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "An experimental and computational study on the influence of ammonia during soot formation processes", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Simon Lapointe and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Accelerating laminar flamelet calculations: application to sooting tendencies of co-flow diffusion flames", Proceedings of the 11th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Paulo K.L. Paes, Yash G Shah, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Removing pollution in the Fourier space representation of non-periodic signals over finite domains", 2019 AIAA SciTech Meeting, pp. AIAA 2019-0903
  • Paulo K.L. Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "Kinematic relationships between physical and Fourier space in premixed turbulent combustion for application to large-eddy simulation", 2019 AIAA SciTech Meeting, pp. AIAA 2019-2145
  • Paulo K.L. Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2019, "A novel strategy to identify dynamically dominant inter-scale couplings for application to large-eddy simulation of premixed turbulent combustion", 2019 AIAA SciTech Meeting, pp. AIAA 2019-1644
  • Hyunguk Kwon, Charles S McEnally, Lisa D Pfefferle and Yuan Xuan, 2018, "Numerical investigation of pressure dependence of yield sooting tendencies", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Sharmin Shabnam, Chowdhary Ashraf, Abhishek Jain, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2018, "Pyrolysis of fuel mixtures at supercritical conditions: a ReaxFF molecular dynamics study", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Charles S McEnally, Brian P Beekley, B P Tana, Peter St. John, Seonah Kim, Abhishek Jain, Hyunguk Kwon, Yuan Xuan, Thomas Kesslerd, John H Mack and Lisa D Pfefferle, 2018, "Sooting tendencies of aromatic hydrocarbons with oxygen-containing side-chains", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Abhishek Jain and Yuan Xuan, 2017, "Influence of large aromatic species on soot formation in turbulent non-premixed jet flames", Proceedings of the 10th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Abhishek Jain and Yuan Xuan, 2017, "Effects of turbulent unsteadiness on aromatic species in a turbulent planar jet flame", Proceedings of the 10th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Paulo Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2017, "Global and local response of premixed flames during flame-vortex interactions under distinct configurations", Proceedings of the 10th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Chowdhary Ashraf, Abhishek Jain, Yuan Xuan and Adrianus C van Duin, 2016, "First ever atomistic scale simulation of hydrocarbon ignition front propagation under supercritical conditions - Validation against experiment and continuum model", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Paulo Paes and Yuan Xuan, 2016, "Numerical investigation of kinetic energy dynamics during autoignition of n-heptane/air mixture", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Anandkumar Makwana, Abhishek Jain, Milton Linevsky, Suresh Iyer, Robert J Santoro, Thomas Litzinger, Yuan Xuan and Jacqueline O'Connor, 2016, "Effects of fuel structure on soot precursors in a laminar co-flow flame", Proceedings of the Eastern States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Nicholas Burali, Guillaume Blanquart and Yuan Xuan, 2015, "The validity of the constant non-unity Lewis number assumption in chemically-reacting flows", Proceedings of the 9th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2015, "Multi-dimensional flow effects on soot formation in laminar premixed flames", Proceedings of the 9th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan, Bruno Savard, Brock Bobbit and Guillaume Blanquart, 2014, "An efficient semi-implicit time-integration scheme for stiff chemical source terms", Proceedings of the Western States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and G. Blanquart, 2014, "Direct numerical simulations of a reacting turbulent mixing layer", Proceedings of the Western States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "Large eddy simulation of a piloted turbulent jet flame", Proceedings of the Western States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "A new radiation model for tabulated chemistry based on steady state flamelets", Proceedings of the Western States Section Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "Impact of mixture fraction field curvature on chemical species transport in diffusion flames", Proceedings of the 8th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "A flamelet-based relaxation model for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in turbulent flames", Proceedings of the 8th US National Meeting of the Combustion Institute

Abstracts

  • Yash G Shah, Yuan Xuan and James G Brasseur, 2018, "Concurrent relationships between physical and Fourier space representations of 3D flow structures for LES of premixed turbulent combustion", 71st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Yuan Xuan and James G Brasseur, 2018, "Inter-scale turbulence-chemistry couplings in premixed turbulent combustion for large-eddy simulations", 71st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Yuan Xuan, Paulo K.L Paes and James G Brasseur, 2017, "Relationships between physical and Fourier space for large-eddy simulation of premixed turbulence combustion: transition from weak to strong vortices", 70th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Paulo K.L Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2017, "Relationships between physical and Fourier space for large-eddy simulation of premixed turbulence combustion: multi-dimensional Fourier decomposition", 70th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Abhishek Jain and Yuan Xuan, 2016, "Effects of nucleating species on soot formation in turbulent non-premixed sooting jet flames", 69th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Paulo K.L Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2016, "Representation of the essential flame-turbulence dynamics using specific flame-vortex interactions", 69th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Paulo K.L Paes, James G Brasseur and Yuan Xuan, 2015, "Numerical investigation of kinetic energy dynamics during auto-ignition of n-heptane/air mixture", 68th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Nicholas Buralo, Guillaume Blanquart and Yuan Xuan, 2014, "Validity of the constant non-unity Lewis number assumption in chemically reacting flows", 67th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Yuan Xuan, 2014, "Effects of small-scale energy injection on large scales in turbulent reaction flows", 67th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "Unsteady effects on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in a turbulent jet flame", 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "A flamelet-based relaxation model for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in turbulent flames", 14th International Conference on Numerical Combustion, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  • Yuan Xuan and Guillaume Blanquart, 2013, "Predicting sooting tendencies with a new flamelet-based model", 14th International Conference on Numerical Combustion, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  • Yuan Xuan, Sidhartha Verma and Guillaume Blanquart, 2012, "Impact of numerical errors on the turbulent mixing of high Schmidt number passive scalars", 65th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society

Research Projects

  • March 2016 - February 2021, "MIP: 2D Crystal Consortium (MIP-2DCC)," (Sponsor: National Science Foundation).
  • May 2017 - April 2021, "The Development of Yield-Based Sooting Tendency Measurements and Modeling to Enable Advanced Combustion Fuels," (Sponsor: Yale University).
  • September 2016 - December 2020, "Interscale Turbulence-Chemistry Dynamics with Reduced Basis Representations," (Sponsor: Air Force Office of Scientific Research).

Honors and Awards

Service

Service to Penn State:

Service to External Organizations:

 


 

About

With more than 60 faculty members, 330 graduate students, and 1,000 undergraduate students, the Penn State Department of Mechanical Engineering embraces a culture that welcomes individuals with a diversity of backgrounds and expertise. Our faculty and students are innovating today what will impact tomorrow’s solutions to meeting our energy needs, homeland security, biomedical devices, and transportation systems. We offer B.S. degrees in mechanical engineering as well as resident (M.S., Ph.D.) and online (M.S.) graduate degrees in mechanical engineering. See how we’re inspiring change and impacting tomorrow at me.psu.edu.

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