Thierry Poinsot (born 22 March 1958), is a French researcher, research director at the CNRS, researcher at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics in Toulouse, scientific advisor at CERFACS[1] and senior research fellow at Stanford University. He has been a member of the French Academy of sciences since 2019.[2]
Engineer from École Centrale de Paris (1980, now Centralesupelec), he obtained a doctorate in engineering in 1983 and a state thesis in 1987 before working at Stanford for two years (1988-1990). He currently works in Toulouse. His areas of expertise are fluid mechanics, combustion, propulsion, acoustics, high performance computing.
Professional positions
Poinsot has taught since 1980 at Ecole Centrale Paris, Stanford, ISAE and ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, Princeton, Tsinghua, Kanpur, CISM,[3] and the von Karmann Institute. He was head of the MIR group (reactive media) at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics in Toulouse from 2010 to 2017 and member of the scientific council of PRACE[4] from 2008 to 2013.
His work focuses mainly on combustion, fluid mechanics and energy. To do this, he uses experiments and theoretical methods. In addition, he relies on high performance numerical simulation[8] which consists in creating 'virtual' digital twins of real systems (such as an airplane or helicopter engine) thanks to supercomputers now comprising several million processors (see Top500[9]).
After his PhD thesis on the physical mechanisms controlling the cooking of tyres (for Michelin), he developed experimental and theoretical studies of combustion instabilities[10] and their control[11][12] in aeronautical engines under the direction of Sébastien Candel at the EM2C laboratory at Centrale Paris. He has also developed models for turbulent combustion.[13]
During his two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, he set up the first direct simulations of turbulent flames.[14][15][16][17] These first academic simulations[18] paved the way for numerical simulation tools for real combustion chambers[19][20] which use the largest computers available today and are used to calculate French aeronautical combustion chambers (rockets, helicopters, aircraft, furnaces).[21][22][23][24] In addition to this numerical simulation work, he has also developed theoretical[25][26][27] and experimental[28][29][30] activities on combustion at the IMFT.
He is currently interested in aeronautical engines and the energy generation systems of the future as well as in the storage of renewable energies using hydrogen.[31] He has made a major contribution to the pooling of major numerical simulation codes for fluid mechanics in France and Europe and his codes are used by hundreds of researchers and engineers. His work has been supported since 2013 by two European ERC (European Research Council) projects: INTECOCIS[8] and SCIROCCO.[31]
He is the author or co-author[32] of Theoretical and numerical combustion with D. Veynante, a textbook on combustion,[33] and 220 articles in peer-reviewed journals
^Poinsot T., Trouvé A., Veynante D., Candel S. et Esposito E., « Vortex driven acoustically coupled combustion instabilities », Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1987, 177, p. 265-292
^Poinsot T., Lang W., Bourienne F., Candel S. et Esposito E., « Suppression of combustion instability by active control », Journal of Propulsion and Power, (1989) 5, 1, p. 14
^McManus K., Poinsot T. et Candel S., « A review of active control methods for combustion instabilities », Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, (1992) 19, p. 1-29
^Candel S.M. et Poinsot T., « Flame stretch and the balance equation for the flame area », Comb. Sci. and Tech., (1990), 70, p. 1-15
^Meneveau C. et Poinsot T., « Stretching and quenching of flamelets in premixed turbulent combustion », Comb. and Flame, (1991), 86, p. 311-332
^Poinsot T., Veynante D. et Candel S., « Quenching processes and premixed turbulent combustion diagrams », Journal of Fluid Mechanics, (1991), 228, p. 561-606
^Poinsot T. et Lele S., « Boundary conditions for direct simulations of compressible reacting flows », Journal of Computational Physics, (1992), 101, 1, p. 104-129
^Poinsot T., Echekki T. et Mungal M.G., « A study of the laminar flame tip and implications for premixed turbulent combustion », Combustion Science and Technology, (1991), 81, 1-3, p. 45
^Vervisch, L. et Poinsot T., « Direct Numerical Simulation of non-premixed turbulent combustion », Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, (1998), 30, p. 655-692
^Moureau, V., Lartigue, G., Sommerer, Y., Angelberger, C., Colin, O. et Poinsot, T., « High-order methods for DNS and LES of compressible multi-component reacting flows on fixed and moving grids », J. Comp. Phys., (2005), 202, p. 710-736
^G. Daviller, G. Oztarlik et T. Poinsot, « A generalized non-reflecting inlet boundary condition for steady and forced compressible flows with injection of vortical and acoustic waves », Comp. Fluids, (2019), 190, p. 503-513
^Boudier G., Gicquel L., Poinsot T., Bissières D. et Bérat C., « Comparison of LES, RANS and Experiments in an Aeronautical Gas Turbine Combustion Chamber », Proc. Comb. Institute, (2007), 31, p. 3075-3082
^M. Boileau, G. Staffelbach, B. Cuenot, T. Poinsot, and C. Bérat, « LES of an ignition sequence in a gas turbine engine », Combustion and Flame, (2008), 154, 1-2, p. 2-22
^M. Leyko, F. Nicoud, S. Moreau et T. Poinsot, « Numerical and analytical investigation of the indirect noise in a nozzle », Compte Rendus de Mécanique, (2009) 337, 6-7, p. 415-425
^L.Y.M. Gicquel, G. Staffelbach et T. Poinsot, Large Eddy Simulation of Gaseous Flames in Gas Turbine Combustion Chambers in "Progress in Energy and Combustion Science", (2012), 38, Article de revue sur la LES dans les turbines. 80 pages, p. 782-817
^M. Bauerheim, P. Salas, F. Nicoud et T. Poinsot, « Symmetry breaking and control of azimuthal thermoacoustic modes in annular chambers », J. Fluid Mech., (2014), 760, p. 431-465
^Nicoud F. and Poinsot, T., « Thermoacoustic instabilities: should the Rayleigh criterion be extended to include entropy changes ? », Comb. Flame, (2005), 142, p. 153-159
^F. Thiesset, F. Halter, C. Bariki, C. Lapeyre, C. Chauveau, I. Gokalp, L. Selle et T. Poinsot, « Isolating strain and curvature effects in premixed flame/vortex interactions », J. Fluid Mech., (2017), 831, p. 618-654
^T. Kaiser, G. Oztarlik, L. Selle, T. Poinsot, « Impact of symmetry breaking on the flame transfer function of a laminar premixed flame », Proc. Comb. Inst., (2019), 37, 2, p. 1953-1962
^D. Mejia, M. Miguel-Brebion, A. Ghani, T. Kaiser, F. Duchaine, L. Selle et T. Poinsot, « Influence of flame-holder temperature on the acoustic flame transfer functions of a laminar flame », Combustion and Flame, ( 2018), 188, p. 5-12
^P. Xavier, A. Ghani, D. Mejia, M. Miguel-Brebion, M. Bauerheim, L. Selle, L. et T. Poinsot, « Experimental and numerical investigation of flames stabilised behind rotating cylinders: interaction of flames with a moving wall », Journal of Fluid Mechanics, (2017), 813, p. 127–151