The 2025 Paul Laffitte Prize has been awarded to Vianney Monnier, associate professor at Toulouse University and LAAS-CNRS (MRS team).

This award recognizes his doctoral research conducted at Institut PPRIME Institute from 2020 to 2023 under the supervision of Pierre Vidal, Vincent Rodriguez, and Ratiba Zitoun.

His research focuses on detonations in gases, and highlights the inherently three-dimensional nature of the cellular structures that make up the detonation reaction zone. Detonations in gases are very fast combustion fronts (several kilometers per second), generating sharp pressure increases (shock waves) ranging from 20 to 40 times the initial pressure.

The experimental methods enable a combination of frontal and parietal image recordings of the detonation fronts.

A theoretical model, based on the one-dimensionnal Zeldovich-von Neumann-Döring model, graph theory, and a statistical study of the motion of the transverse shock waves, predicts the characteristic length of detonation reaction zones . 

This research provides a better understanding of detonation phenomena and has applications in industrial safety (especially for hydrogen), advanced propulsion systems (such as rotating detonation engines), and the modeling of astrophysical explosions like supernovae.

Congratulations to Vianney !