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Mechanical Engineering Program

Thermal-Fluids Area

Photo of thermal-fluidsFaculty in the Thermal-Fluids Area are concerned with the transport of momentum, heat and chemical substances in various fluids, as well as with interdisciplinary topics such as biofluids, materials processing and fluid-structure interaction. Several faculty and students in this area at Iowa are affiliated with IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering. They also interact closely with the hydraulics group within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the biofluids group in the Biomedical Engineering Department.

Faculty

The faculty affiliated with the Thermal-Fluids Area are listed below. Descriptions of specific research projects in this area can be accessed through research links on the individual faculty pages or through the IIHR web site.

Thermal-Fluids Faculty With Primary Appointments in MIE

Photo of Christoph Beckermann

Christoph Beckermann

Research Interests: Solidification of metal alloys and composites, transport phenomena in multi-phase, multi-component systems, heat and mass transfer in buoyancy driven systems and in porous media.

Photo of Barry Butler

P. Barry Butler

Research Interests: Ignition phenomena in energetic materials, real-gas thermochemical processes, reaction in supercritical water medium, detonation of gas and condensed-phase media.

Photo of Lea-Der Chen

Lea-Der Chen

Research Interests: Combustion, sprays, biofuels, supercritical fuels, fuel cell, airbag diagnostics and modeling, optical flow diagnostics, bio-fluid mechanics.

Photo of Ching-Long Lin

Ching-Long Lin

Research Interests: Boundary layer and turbulence, bubbly and free-surface flow, microfluidics, gas transport in the lungs, data assimilation, computational fluid dynamics.

Photo of Jeffrey Marshall

Jeffrey S. Marshall

Research Interests: Three dimensional vortex dynamics, vortex turbulence, particulate and bubbly flows, computational fluid dynamics, particle-image velocimetry.

Photo of Virendra Patel

Virendra C. Patel

Research Interests: Turbulent shear flows, computational fluid dynamics, hydraulics and biofluid dynamics.

Photo of Albert Ratner

Albert Ratner

Research Interests: Flame front dynamics, impact of fuel mixing on combustion instabilities, effectiveness of diagnostic techniques in accurately assessing flame state variables, hydrocarbon-based liquid rockets.

Photo of Frederick Stern

Frederick Stern

Research Interests: Computational and experimental fluid dynamics and uncertainty analysis, ship hydrodynamics, viscous flow, free surface waves and turbulence, propulsors and cavitation, resistance and propulsion, and ship and platform motions and maneuvering.

Photo of H.S. Udaykumar

H.S. Udaykumar

Research Interests: Computational fluid dynamics, moving boundary problems in materials processing and biofluid dynamics, simulation of wave impact and wave propogation phenomena, turbulent flow in stenosed arteries, heat and mass transfer in cryobiology.

Thermal-Fluids Faculty with Secondary Appointments in MIE

Photo of Krishnan Chandran

Krishnan B. Chandran

Research Interests: Hemodynamics, cardiac mechanics, vascular prosthesis and artificial heart valve dyanmics, fluid dynamic.

Courses

Numerous graduate courses in the Thermal-Fluids Area are offered at both the 100- and 200-levels. Many of these courses are cross-listed with the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.

 

The University of Iowa College of Engineering