Michigan Technological University
There are three faculty members at Michigan Technological University actively engaged in research in the Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer area. They are Assistant Professor S.L. Yang, Associate Professor Oner Arici, and Assistant Professor Donna J. Michaelek. Each has a distinct area of expertise and, as a group, posses the capability of functioning together to create a diverse research team.
Dr. S.L. Yang's area of expertise is in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He has extensive experience in using KIVA codes. He has demonstrated himself in these areas, through his research involvements/grants sponsored by NASA-LeRC, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Ford Motor Company, and Kysor Cadillac. He is currently involved in a low emission staged gas turbine combustor simulation using the KIVA-III code. This project, as part of the High-speed Civil Transport (HSCT) program, has been supported by the Combustion Technology Branch of NASA LeRC since 1989. He and his graduate students are the authors of the pseudo-compressible code whose development was supported by NREL. He has also developed a compressible code for rotary engine combustion chamber fluid flow and heat transfer simulation, and an incompressible flow code for single-pass return flow heat exchanger. His expertise in these areas has resulted in several publications and has attracted three PhD students.
Dr. Oner Arici has experience in the turbomachinery field and varied interests in the area of heat transfer and thermal systems in general. Dr. Oner Arici along with Dr. Yang, and with the consent and approval of NASA LeRC Turbomachinery Technology Branch, initiated work on a turbine blade cooling program at MTU in 1989. He teaches a senior level gas turbine in the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department at MTU. He has considerable expertise in the computer simulation of thermal systems. Dr. Arici and Dr. Yang are also involved in the modeling of a full scale vehicle air-conditioning system using computer simulations. The goal of this research is optimization of the system from both weight and capacity points of view. This research has been deemed so successful by its sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, that at present it is considered classified, and no publication of this program is permissible.
Dr. Donna J. Michalek is the third member of the Computational Fluid Dynamic Research Group. She has a strong background in Computational Fluid Dynamics, especially in the compressible flow regime. Her research involvements include extensive code development of genuinely multidimensional solvers. A portion of her work on algorithm development was funded by a grant through the NASA Langley Research Center . At the present time, she is also involved in a research project sponsored by Ford Motor Company which involves the investigation of the fluid flow through a fuel injector.
Currently, the Computational Fluid Dynamics Research Group within the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department is very active in the research areas of computational aerodynamics, internal combustion (IC) engine simulation, climate control of passenger cars, etc.. At the present time, in addition to the three faculty members, there are two PhD and four MS students in this research group. The group has computational codes to cover all flow regimes, and also has the resources to generate grids for complicated domains. Therefore, the group has the resources to investigate a wide variety of fluid flow and heat transfer problems related to the gas turbine industry.
The computer facilities available to the Computational Fluid Dynamics Group consist of three primary systems. The first is a Stardent ST3000 Graphic computer with vector/parallel processing capabilities, which services several Sun Workstations. A Stardent ST750 Graphic computer with vector/parallel processing capability is also available. The ST750 has 32 MB of memory and a 380MB disk. The second facility is a Sun SPARCstation 10 Series Model 52. It has two processors, and 128 MB memory and 1 GB disk. The third facility is an Alliant FX800 mini-supercomputer. This system includes a 65 MB memory module, a dual 800 MB formatted disk subsystem and an M400 PM processing unit comprised of a cluster of four processors. All of these systems reside in the ME-EM Department at MTU and are therefore readily accessible. |