Directory profile for Dr. Joshua A. Bittle

Dr. Joshua Bittle’s on-going research activities include:

• High-speed spatially resolved two-color pyrometry, rainbow schlieren deflectometry, and chemiluminescence imaging both individually and simultaneously to study high pressure diesel-like fuel spray mixing, ignition, and combustion for diesel and automotive applications. These fundamental studies – enabled with a custom experimental apparatus – explore the impact of ambient and injection conditions, and candidate biofuel blends on fuel-air mixing, including thermodynamics and chemical processes.

• Experimental and computational analysis of fuel-air mixing under supercritical conditions. As fuel-air mixing under diesel-like conditions has the potential to experience purely supercritical mixing this work explores the differences in spray mixing both experimentally and through CFD modeling that includes real-gas, real-mixture effects.

• Advanced real-time control-based emissions mitigation of heavy-duty diesel engines. These applied studies aim to enable stable ultra-lean combustion modes that have been proven to reduce in-cylinder emissions formation and thereby reduce demand on after-treatment systems of these critical heavy-duty engines used for long-haul freight transit.

• Impact of connected vehicles and infrastructure on network wide fuel economy and emissions generation. Using near real-time traffic volume and vehicle classification this work aims to quantify impacts to regional fuel consumption and emissions and through connectivity reduce the penalties to individuals and the region during congested driving.