Flame Propagation Fundamentals

Andrés Mendiburu, Ph.D., is a professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is an energy engineer from Universidad Nacional del Santa with a master's degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from São Paulo State University. His doctoral thesis was on the flammability limits of hydrocarbons and alcohols in air. Dr. Mendiburu coordinates the International Research Group for Energy Sustainability (IRGES), where he researches premixed flame propagation. His research addresses limit phenomena, deflagrations, and detonations, focusing on sustainable fuels. Dr. Mendiburu was an invited post-doctoral Fellow at the Explosion Physics and Prevention Laboratory at Queen's University, Canada, and a short-term visiting professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in 2024. He also received a 4-month Linnaeus-Palme Fellowship from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2012. Dr. Mendiburu lectures on classical thermodynamics, compressible flows, and fundamentals of detonation in the Graduate Program in Mechanical Engineering (PROMEC) at UFRGS. He is coauthor of the book Combustão Aplicada (EdUFSC, 2018). Dr. Mendiburu received a grant from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) as a researcher of the PQ-2 level, a grant for young professors based on their contribution to research and supervision of Master's and Ph.D. students. Since 2023, Dr. Mendiburu has been a member of the board of the Brazil section of the Combustion Institute (RNC). In 2022, Dr. Mendiburu was elected Secretary of the Combustion Technical Committee (CTC) of the Brazilian Association of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (ABCM). He coordinated the Combustion Symposiums for the International Congress of Mechanical Engineering (COBEM) in 2021 and 2023, and the Brazilian Congress of Thermal Science and Engineering (ENCTI) in 2020, 2022, and 2024. He was the vice president of the Organizing Committee of the 9th International Combustion Institute Winter School (9th RNC-CI-WS), held in Brazil in 2023.