I am confident that her contributions will not only elevate our research profile but also enrich the educational experience of our students and enable impactful collaborations across industry and government.
- Travis Knight, Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Earlier this fall, the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing welcomed Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Ashwini Karmarkar to its faculty.
During her first semester on campus, she has worked to build her research, which focuses on experimentally characterizing the effects of fuel properties on combustion performance and the durability of jet engines. In the spring, she will begin teaching an undergraduate course on combustible fuels for aerospace.
Before joining the University of South Carolina, Karmarkar was a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in DuPage County, Illinois, where she employed advanced x-ray diagnostics to study alternative fuels and novel technologies for clean and sustainable transportation and power systems. Her goal was to determine how changing fuel combinations can alter the flow of fuel in jet engines to make the fuel as adaptable as possible.
“Fuel flexibility is a significant area of interest in modern aircraft economy,” Karmarkar says. “We want to look at how different fuels behave in jet engines and increase flame stability so that we can thereby increase efficiency and reduce emissions.”
Karmarkar earned her master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Columbia University, followed by her Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. At Columbia, her research focused on biomechanics, but coursework in jet propulsion inspired her interest in combustion performance and fuel flexibility.
Mechanical Engineering Professor Jacqueline O’Connor, Karmarkar’s Ph.D. advisor at Penn State, encouraged her to pursue those interests, and she focused her doctoral research on applying laser diagnostics and advanced data decomposition methods to investigate the flow-flame coupling mechanisms driving combustion instabilities in jet engines.
“Dr. Karmarkar’s work revealed the mechanisms that drive undesirable, high-amplitude oscillations in combustion systems for aircraft engines and power-generation gas turbines,” O’Connor says. “Her work took a unique approach in simultaneously considering the hydrodynamic and thermoacoustic instability together, providing fundamental insight into this problem of high practical interest. While much of the theory was developed in laboratory-scale experiments, she was able to apply it to realistic-scale combustors, increasing the impact of her work.”
At USC, Karmarkar is continuing her research into hydrodynamic and acoustic instabilities, flame-flow interactions, coking and deposition in fuel injectors, and the role of internal geometry in fuel spray dynamics. While her overall goal remains the same—to enhance the flexibility and efficiency of fuel in jet engines—she will shift her focus to the internal engine hardware and how changes to it affect fuel sprays. She will also incorporate machine learning for data extraction methodologies.
“Dr. Karmarkar’s arrival strengthens our college’s commitment to tackling one of the most urgent engineering challenges of our time: clean and sustainable advanced transportation systems,” says Travis Knight, Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Her pioneering work brings both deep technical expertise and a bold vision for sustainable propulsion.”
Karmarkar was likewise attracted to USC’s facilities and faculty expertise. Both will be a valuable complement to her research and enhance her understanding of fuel behavior inside jet engines.
“I wanted to work at an institution with experimental facilities, which very few actually have. When I visited, I was excited by the work I saw,” Karmarkar says. “The great infrastructure of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the expertise of my colleagues in fuel chemistry is valuable to what I hope to accomplish through my research.”