Levich Institute Seminar Announcement, 09/23/2008

Tuesday, 09/23/2008 2:00 PM Steinman Hall, Room #312 (Chemical Engineering Conference Room) Professor Gretar Tryggvason Worcester Polytechnic Institute Mechanical Engineering Department "Computational Studies of the Dynamics of Heterogeneous Continuum Systems"

ABSTRACT

Systems where continuum theory provides an accurate description of the system behavior, but where there is a large difference between the system scale and the smallest continuum scales are found in a wide range of industrial applications as well as in Nature. Multiphase flows, including bubbly flows and boiling, sprays, and solid suspensions, are common examples. Bridging the gap and using our understanding of the small scales to predict the behavior at the system scale is one of the grand challenges of science. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of the evolution of sufficiently small systems so that all continuum scales are fully resolved, yet large enough so that interactions of flow structures of different scales can take place, are increasingly playing a central role in studies of the dynamics of heterogeneous continuum systems. Here, we discuss in some details recent results for wall-bounded bubbly flows, where DNS have yielded new and unexpected insight into the subtle importance of accurately accounting for bubble deformability. The development of numerical methods for more complex multiphase flows is also underway and a few examples of simulations of boiling flows are presented.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT BACKGROUND:

Gretar Tryggvason is a Professor and Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He received his doctorate from Brown University in 1985 and spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Courant Institute. After fifteen years as a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Michigan, he moved to WPI in 2000. He has also held short term visiting positions at Caltech, NASA Lewis Engineering Research Center, University of Marseilles, and University of Paris VI. He is an active member of several professional societies, a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computational Physics.

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Professor Tryggvason is well known for his research on numerical simulations of multiphase and free-surface flows, vortex flows, and flows with phase changes.

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