DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Indian Institute Of Technology Madras
team

Varunkumar, S.

Associate Professor

206-B, Thermodynamics & Combustion Engineering Lab

PhD from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

+91- 44 -2257- 4717

varuns [at]iitm[.]ac[.]in

Scopus ID

  • Dr. S Varunkumar received his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from NIT, Trichy in 2007 and PhD from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2012. He worked as a research associate at IISc from February, 2012 to May, 2013 and as Assistant professor (on contract) till December, 2013 at IIT Ropar, Punjab, before joining IIT Madras as Assistant Professor.

  • Past research areas:
  • Gasification and combustion of biomass and coal.
  • Composite solid propellant combustion modeling.
  • Modeling combustion driven instabilities in solid propellant rockets.
  • Currently exploring:
  • High frequency combustion instabilities in liquid propellant rockets and afterburners.
  • Catalytic fast pyrolysis of biomass for liquid fuel synthesis.
  • Application of symbolic regression and other data-driven methods to problems in, but not limited to, combustion and fluid mechanics.

  1. Prof. Chintakindi V Joga Rao Medal from IISc, Bangalore for best thesis in Aerospace Engineering for the year 2012 – 2013

  1. Mani Kalyani Ambatipudi & Varunkumar S (2020) Experimental and Theoretical Investigations on High-ash Coal-air Flames in High-speed Jets Stabilized Recirculating Flow, Combustion Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/00102202.2020.1799202
  2. Jaganathan V M, Mani Kalyani Ambatipudi & Varunkumar S (2020) The Phenomenon of Flame Jump in Counter–current Flame Propagation in Biomass Packed Beds – Experiments and Theory, Combustion Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/00102202.2020.1804886
  3. Jaganathan, V. M., and S. Varunkumar. “A novel self-sustained single step process for synthesizing activated char from ligno-cellulosic biomass.” Fuel Processing Technology 208 (2020): 106516.
  4. Ambatipudi Mani Kalyani, Jaganathan V. M. & Varunkumar S. “Mechanisms governing the gasification to char oxidation transition in counter-current flame propagation in packed beds: insights from single-particle experiments”. Particulate Science and Technology (2020): DOI:10.1080/02726351.2020.1767245
  5. Wadhai, Vishal, and S. Varunkumar. “Perturbation analysis of the Heterogeneous Quasi 1-D model–a theoretical framework for predicting frequency response of AP–HTPB composite solid propellants.” Combustion Theory and Modelling (2020): 1-20.
  6. Ali, S. M., and S. Varunkumar. “Effect of burner diameter and diluents on the extinction strain rate of syngas-air non-premixed Tsuji-type flames.” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2020).
  7. V.M. Jaganathan, Omex Mohan, S. Varunkumar, Intrinsic hydrogen yield from gasification of biomass with oxy-steam mixtures. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 44, Issue 33, (2019):17781-17791.
  8. V M Jaganathan and S Varunkumar. Net carbon-di-oxide conversion and other novel features of packed bed biomass gasification with O2/CO2 mixtures. Fuel 244 (2019): 545-558.
  9. S Varunkumar and H. S. Mukunda. Aluminized composite propellant combustion modeling with Heterogeneous Quasi-One dimensional (HeQu1-D) approach. Combustion and Flame 192 (2018): 59-70.
  10. S. Varunkumar, M. Zaved, H.S. Mukunda. A novel approach to composite propellant combustion modeling with a new Heterogeneous Quasi One-dimensional (HeQu1-D) framework, Combustion and Flame, Volume 173, November 2016, Pages 411-424. (link to MATLAB code for HeQu1-D).
  11. S Varunkumar, N K S Rajan, and H S Mukunda. Experimental and computational studies on a gasifier based stove. Energy Conversion and Management, 53(1):135-141, 2012.
  12. S Varunkumar, N K S Rajan, and H S Mukunda. Universal flame propagation behaviour in a packed bed of biomass. Combustion Science and Technology. 185 (8):1241-1260, 2013.
  13. S Varunkumar, N K S Rajan and H S Mukunda. Single particle and packed bed combustion in modern gasifier stoves -density effects. Combustion Science and Technology, 183(11):1147-1163, 2011.