 The U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Propulsion made an historic first with its experiment of bombarding fuel ignition with X-rays and gathering unique data that will advance engine efficiency. We are at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source. This is the strongest X-ray source in the world and we're here to do spray imaging, spray break-up imaging inside a gas turbine combustor that is relevant to the Army. Lee and his graduate students along with partners from the ARL Center for UAS Propulsion set up shop in the Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois resulting in a unique experiment. So we have a combustor which is a gas turbine combustor modeled after the combustor that would be typically used in a helicopter in the Army and then we had actually a combustion going on which is done for the first time ever at APS and we are imaging the spray break-up at the very tip of the injector using an X-ray source. So typically that region where the liquid breaks up is very dense and it's difficult to image anything inside there but using this X-ray source we're able to penetrate into that liquid layer and understand how the ligaments liquid spray breaks up into these small droplets. So that's what we were trying to image with this huge X-ray source. Computers play a crucial role in determining many of the engine's operating characteristics such as fuel efficiency and levels of emission. So we are trying to understand what exactly occurs inside the gas turbine combustor to understand how the gas turbine combustor responds to different operating conditions. The data gathered during this experiment will become the initial conditions for numerical simulations that will further the understanding of gas turbine combustors. The advanced photon source has spent a lot of effort over the last decade or so looking at spray drop the break up and never has it been done in a live combusting environment so we made the hardware to make it happen and so this is the first time it's actually been done live with a combusting flow in a combustor. The experiment was also the first accomplishment at the lab's new center for UAS propulsion which kicked off a massive partnership between academia and industry. ARL held a ribbon cutting for the center April 2nd from Argonne National Laboratory David McNally, ARL TV.