Recipient: 2008 Black Engineer of the Year Award 2008
Dr. Yolanda Hicks has shown ingenuity in performing both fundamental and applied combustion research programs at NASA Glenn Research Center. She has supported numerous NASA programs including High Speed Civil Transport, Advanced Subsonic Transport Program, Ultra Efficiency Engine Programs, and Fundamental Aeronautics Program.
Dr. Hicks has consistently demonstrated innovative and outstanding technical work in low emissions combustion research and applied combustion diagnostics. She led the development of high pressure measurement techniques; this enables quantitative temperature measurement and measurement of major species in extreme future gas turbine operating conditions. Her works have led directly to improving advanced fuel injector designs.
For instance, General Electric Aircraft Engines (GEAE) experienced fuel injector bum out but could not determine the reason. Dr, Hicks stepped in and discovered that this was because the swirl angles were larger than GEAE’s design anticipated, and GEAE later changed the angles which alleviated the problem and saved a million dollars of development cost.
In addition, Dr. Hicks also developed a strategy for fuel injector mixing and velocity measurements for jet fuel reforming application that has been a great success and led to the success of demonstration projects for a fuel cell company and the Department of Energy. The eager interest, discussions generated, and desire for advancing technology to help U.S. engine companies are a strong testament to her value and .
Dr. Hicks is acknowledged as a key contributor on numerous NASA in-house research and in external collaboration with other government agencies and U.S. engine companies where she helped the combustion community understand the fundamental combustion science.
Dr. Hicks developed Raman scattering and Laser-Induced-Fluorescence (PLIF) species probes, PIV velocity probe and droplet sizing probe for high pressure combustion systems. She also developed strategies for air/fuel mixing for jet fuel reformation program which was very successfully demonstrated by the fuel cell company (SOFCo).
Dr. Hicks has excelled in combustion diagnostics in high pressure combustors. She has made numerous experimental findings that were used to improve the combustor design in order to avoid the auto-ignitions and to lower pollutant emissions. For example, she has made the Planar Laser-Induced- Fluorescence (PLIF) measurements on the OH radicals and Jet A fuel concentrations on the prototype General Electric Aircraft Engines (GEAE) combustors designed to power Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Through her acquired experimental results, the proposed combustor was redesigned to achieve even lower NOx emissions.
Dr. Hicks also worked closely with Mr. Robert Tacina on the Lean Direction Fuel Injection concept on NOx reduction. They adopted Multi-Point fuel injection concepts and have achieved 70 to 85% NOx reduction relative to 1996 ICAO Standard.
She also worked closely with Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engineers to improve P&W’s combustion system design through laser diagnostic measurements. The company was actively studying ways to improve performance, durability, and operability of advanced gas turbine combustors. Rig and engine tests of combustion systems are expensive. At the conditions engines operate, the flame has complicated dynamics and complex pollutant formation pathways. Using traditional physical probes, the flow is perturbed and measurements arc compromised as the flow adjusts to the presence of a cooled physical structure that is foreign to its normal operation.
Laser diagnostics allowed Pratt & Whitney engineers to conduct experiments at conditions that exist in engines and measure flow properties like temperature, gas composition, fuel atomization, vaporization and mixing without perturbing the flow. The fuel injection process affects many important combustion characteristics, such as ignition, blowout, pollutant formation, and instability. Yolanda’s work helped provide an understanding of what development steps they needed to take to create next generation high performance, low emissions gas turbines.
