Fluids

Training in the Fluid Mechanics group provides students with an understanding of the fundamentals of fluid flow. The program prepares graduate students for careers in industry and academia.

At the graduate level, all students must complete a one-year course in fluid dynamics before specializing in particular areas. In addition, the group strives to provide graduates with a firm foundation in analytical, computational and experimental essentials of fluid dynamics.

Research activities span the Reynolds number range from creeping flows to planetary phenomena. Topics of current study include suspension mechanics, dynamics of phase changes (in engineering and in geophysical flows), earth mantle dynamics, interfacial phenomena, non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, biofluid mechanics, vascular flows, chaotic mixing and transport of scalars, bubble dynamics, flow in curved pipes, environmental fluid dynamics, external aerodynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, bluff-body aerodynamics, vortex dynamics and breakdown, aircraft wake vortices, vortex merger, vortex instabilities, rotating flows, stability and transition, chaos, grid turbulence, shear turbulence, turbulence modeling, shock dynamics, sonoluminescence, sonochemistry, reacting flows, planetary atmospheres, ship waves, internal waves, and nonlinear wave-vorticity interaction.

Our experimental facilities are equipped with a low speed wind tunnel, a ship-model towing basin, a hydraulically driven wave tank, and apparatus for vascular flows, rotating flows, channel flows, jet flows, grid turbulence. The instrumentation includes numerous lasers for PIV, LDV and flow visualization, hot wire anemometers, pressure transducers, strain gauge balances, and various motion systems. All are equipped with data acquisition and processing systems.

The Major Field Advisors for each research area are listed here.