CBE Plays a Key Role in $8.5 million CHREST Grant

Three student-built rockets behind Davis Hall.

Published December 7, 2020

Mark Swihart is part of a university team which has recently received an $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to launch the Center for Hybrid Rocket Exascale Simulation Technology (CHREST) at UB. 

CBE Involvement in CHREST

CBE participants in CHREST include Venoos Amiri Roodan, Rubik Asatryan, and Mark Swihart. Their role in this effort is to develop detailed chemical reaction mechanisms and chemical kinetic models for the combustion of the paraffin fuels used in hybrid rockets and for the formation of soot as these fuels evaporate and burn. These chemical kinetic models will be coupled into extremely large-scale computer simulations of the turbulent, multiphase, reacting flow occurring in hybrid rockets to provide new fundamental insights and design capabilities.

Read more about CHREST here.