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Inoue Lab (Propulsion Engineering)
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The lab looks inside rocket and aircraft engines to study heat and flow.
AboutAbout the lab
Seeing heat and flow inside engines.
The Inoue Lab studies propulsion engineering, including aircraft engines, rocket engines, and engines for satellites.
Combining visualization experiments with high-speed cameras, numerical simulation, and theoretical modeling, the lab analyzes in detail the thermal and fluid phenomena inside engines.
It brings the resulting findings together and links them to performance prediction and optimization of real engines.
The lab studies atomization and phase change of liquid metal to obtain the high-quality metal powder essential for building aerospace and automotive engines. It also covers everyday physics, such as the chain-like branching of sparklers and metal sparks.
Key terms
- Atomization
- Breaking a liquid into fine droplets. It is fundamental to turning fuel into a spray and to making metal powder.
- Specific impulse
- A value showing how efficiently a propellant is converted into thrust.
- Liquid film
- A thin layer of liquid spread over a surface such as a wall.
NewsLab news
An article explaining unsteady measurement of liquid film flow using laser-induced fluorescence was published in the Journal of the Gas Turbine Society of Japan
Research by master's students and others was published in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
Research by master's students and others was published in Materials & Design
A PhD student received a Kyushu University Student Award (Academic Research)
A master's student received a Young Presentation Award from the Thermal Engineering Division of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
ResearchResearch themes
The lab aims to uncover phenomena hidden in aerospace, energy, and manufacturing, using high-speed cameras, laser measurement, infrared measurement, and theoretical models. Its targets are thermal and fluid phenomena that are still not understood, such as carbon dioxide emitted by rocket engines and aircraft, liquid films and droplets, liquid metals, and phase change.
*Illustrative imageBreaking liquid metal into fine particles
Building aerospace and automotive engines requires high-quality metal powder with uniform particle size. To produce such powder, the lab studies atomization, in which molten metal breaks up into fine particles, and the phase change that occurs during that process.
*Illustrative imageDirectly imaging carbon dioxide from aircraft
The lab has succeeded in filming the carbon dioxide emitted from a latest-generation aircraft jet engine directly and selectively as video. It used an infrared camera fitted with a narrow-band filter that passes only 4.2–4.4 micrometers, the range where carbon dioxide transmits little light, and ran the experiment at Fukuoka International Airport.
*Illustrative imageLooking inside a rocket engine
Using a quartz glass combustion chamber, the lab visualizes multiphase combustion inside a rocket engine operating at subcritical pressure. It can clearly see even how the liquid film of fuel, flowed along the inner wall to cool it, spreads.
*Illustrative imagePredicting engine performance with water flow
A newly developed theoretical model has successfully predicted the performance of chemical propulsion systems, such as characteristic velocity, specific impulse, and thrust. The lab examines the process in which two jets collide at an angle and atomize, using water-flow tests.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Inoue Lab are faculty, secretaries, and PhD, master's, and undergraduate students.
- Associate ProfessorChihiro Inoue
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “J58 AfterburnerT” NASA / Public domain (cropped)
- Breaking liquid metal into fine particles: “Lava fountain from Kīlauea's ongoing summit eruption (96758)” USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory / Public domain (cropped)
- Directly imaging carbon dioxide from aircraft: “Contrails in the sky at sunset” AlixSaz / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Looking inside a rocket engine: “Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Hovering” Pslawinski / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Predicting engine performance with water flow: “Liquid Fishbones” Bavand Keshavarz / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
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手嶋 研究室 （熱工学・応用物理学分野） ): “Floating Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) proposed by Geyser Force” Pbmaise / CC BY 4.0 (cropped) - Related lab (矢代研究室
（軽構造システム工学分野） ): “Carbonsheetwiki1” Racingjeff / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped) - Related lab (花田研究室
（宇宙機ダイナミクス分野） ): “ISS-38 Nanosatellites deployment (b)” NASA / Public domain (cropped)
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