Ideas that fire on all cylinders
The paperwork is there, but Charlie Westbrook isn’t truly retired.
He loves what he does so he’s really never had to work a day in his life.
Ask him about astrophysics or weapons or automobiles or climate. And he’s got your answer: it all comes down to reactive flow.
For more than 30 years, Westbrook has been a pioneer in the combustion field. While he officially retired from the Laboratory three years ago (after 41 years of service), he can still be found at the Lab a few days a week working chemical kinetic modeling codes, the backbone of combustion.
In 1967, Westbrook was doing graduate work at UC Davis’ Department of Applied Science (DAS), after being recruited by the Hertz Foundation and Edward Teller. In 1968, he got a job in the Laboratory’s physics department doing weapons work, while still working to earn his Ph.D.
Director Emeritus Bruce Tarter, who at the time worked in the physics department, was not only Westbrook’s Ph.D. adviser but also his golf and squash partner. By 1974, Westbrook had his Ph.D. in astrophysics while working in the weapons program.
"He’s the kind of guy that listens well, takes data and never has any special agenda," Tarter said. "I always appreciated his tact and skill and if you gave him a job, you knew it would get done."
Westbrook worked in an office down the hall from a couple of global climate model leaders, Julius Chang and Mike MacCracken (who also was Westbrook’s squash partner for 15 years). He realized that the same codes he was working on to study the dynamics of weapons also could be applied to combustion chemistry.
"Really there are only a few equations out there and they all relate to reacting turbulent flow," Westbrook said. "They apply to bombs or climate or an automobile engine."
By grasping this, Westbrook was on his way to becoming the combustion guru at the Lab, in the auto industry and worldwide.
"It was the most astute and ignorant decision I ever made," he said. "Everyone agreed combustion chemistry was something really important but no one else wanted to do it."
He said the advent of the most powerful computers at the Laboratory was key to his ability to "always be way out in front" in the combustion field.
Working closely with the auto industry, including Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation and Unocal, Westbrook was tapped to find the major source of unburned hydrocarbon emissions in an automobile engine. At the time, engine researchers were certain that the cause was the extinguishing of the flame as it reaches the relatively cold walls of the cylinder.
But Westbrook’s modeling calculations led to a different explanation: the primary source of unburned hydrocarbon emissions was actually the unreacted fuel in the piston ring crevices.
"That was an ‘aha’ idea," he said. "It overturned a commonly believed notion and found the real culprit."
That wasn’t the only discovery. Westbrook and LLNL colleague Bill Pitz produced a chemical kinetic study of fuel additives for engine knock in spark ignition engines, a feat that earned them the 1991 Horning Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
"He is easy to work with," Pitz said. "People often mention that they know him, when it comes up in conversion that I work with Charlie Westbrook. Because of his involvement in a broad range of activities during his career at LLNL, he has many people at LLNL who have met and worked with him."
Engines operate most efficiently at the highest compression ratios, but that is precisely where knocking occurs. Engine knock sets an upper limit to the compression ratio at which a spark-ignited internal combustion engine can operate. Suppressing knock permits engines to operate at higher compression ratios and thus to achieve higher fuel efficiency and lower carbon dioxide emissions. Westbrook and Pitz’s award-winning paper was the culmination of a long-term study of the fundamental chemical factors that control knocking.
"He communicates very well," Pitz said. "He writes up his technical work in a way to make it accessible to a broad audience. He is known for being a very good speaker and is quite in demand for invited talks at conferences related to combustion."
Another advantage Westbrook’s team had was the ability to model complex multi-molecule fuels, something the auto industry wasn’t doing at the time.
"We were unique in being able to model the fuels that industry cared about," Westbrook said.
And even today, he is building a model for a biodiesel fuel that has a chain of 18 carbon atoms.
"He evolved a scheme where he could take any fuel in the world and generate a way to make it better and work more efficiently," Tarter said.
Westbrook has won many awards for his research including most recently being named a fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). He also earned the Combustion Institute’s 2008 Bernard Lewis Gold Medal, the American Chemical Society’s Thomas Midgley Award, SAE’s Horning Memorial Award, SAE’s Arch Colwell Award of Merit in 2000 and 2003. In addition, in August, Westbrook began his four-year term as president of the Combustion Institute.
When he’s at the Lab, the radio in his office is often tuned to the San Francisco Giant’s games. He’s an avid fan and played catcher for his college team. While working at the Lab full-time, "he was by all measures the best single athlete in the theoretical program," Tarter said. "But he’s really a renaissance guy."
A dedicated family man (he has two grown daughters), Westbrook also entered quilts in the county fair (and won awards), built his own harpsichord from a kit, dug wells on his property and constructed a self-sufficient home.
Outside of the Lab, Westbrook can be found spending time with his wife at their off-the-grid solar home near Mines Road in Livermore, tending to their 120-tree olive grove and making their very own extra virgin olive oil. Harvesting and pressing starts in the next few weeks.
At 63, Westbrook isn’t about to stop. He is passionate about his chemical kinetic modeling work. He works on it not only at the office, but at home and when he is traveling.
