Now in its eighth year, the 2011 Combustion Art Competition Awards held at a recent meeting of the Combustion Institute brought together a bunch of pyrotechnic scientists eager to show off their red-hot creations. New Scientist takes a look at the winners and runners-up.
Flaming Star
Combining three separate images, all taken as part of her research into spacecraft fire safety, aerospace engineer Sandra Olson of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, won with her star-shaped rendition of flames burning in microgravity.
The blue areas are produced when visible light is released from the chemical reaction in a process known as chemiluminescence. The white, yellow and orange colours occur as soot burns in the flame.
(Image: Sandra Olson)
Dr Combustion
Bogdan Pavlov and Li Qiao of Purdue University, Indiana, combined images of several different flame types to create Dr Combustion, winning second place in the process.
Dr Combustion's nose, beard and hair were created by adding different mixtures of nanoparticles to a flame. The eyes and mouth are examples of counterflow diffusion flame, while the hat is an example of a more typical methane-air diffusion flame.
(Image: Bogdan Pavlov and Li Qiao)
Super Fire Whirl
Earning Nelson Akafuah and Kozo Saito of the University of Kentucky in Lexington joint third place, this fire whirl was created by igniting benzene, a simple petrochemical, then mirroring and rotating the resultant image to produce a distinctive "S" shape.
(Image: Nelson Akafuah and Kozo Saito)
Fan of Fire
This multiple composite image from Michael Gollner and Xinyan Huang of the University of California, San Diego, also came third.
The "ceiling fire" on the left resulted in a blue flame flattened to the substrate. As inclination increased the flame's behaviour became more turbulent.
Gollner and Huang used these tests to work out critical inclinations for maximum flame spread rates, burning rates and heat fluxes from the flame.
(Image: Michael Gollner and Xinyan Huang)
