PROPOSAL NO.: CTS-0449151 PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: ASSAD OBERAI INSTITUTION: BOSTON UNIVERSITY
CAREER: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE VARIATIONAL MULTISCALE FORMULATION OF LARGE EDDY SIMULATION
Over the last three decades, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) has emerged as an important technique in simulating turbulent flows, with applications in environmental, aerospace, automotive, marine, and material processing research and industry. The growth in the use of LES has been spurred by applications where the resolution of large scale eddies is necessary, and by the advent of massively parallel computers and affordable workstation clusters. This has resulted in the development of several new promising LES formulations, including the variational multiscale (VMS) method. The research funded by this grant will advance the state-of-the-art in LES in general, and the VMS formulation of LES in particular. New, robust and accurate VMS models will be derived, algorithms for their application to flows in complex geometries will be developed, the VMS concept will be extended to turbulent mixing and compressible flows, and systematic studies will be performed to evaluate the proposed models and methods. The development of dynamic VMS could have a beneficial impact on LES simulations, especially if their use in practical applications is demonstrated. The educational program includes activities at the high school level, course improvement at the undergraduate level, and course development at the graduate level. Educational emphasis is proposed in the form of development and use of computational modules for students to "experiment" with simple flows. Science and engineering will be made more accessible and "fun" to high-school students by utilizing computer simulations to visualize hidden physical phenomena and to perform stimulating virtual experiments. High school teachers and students will be trained in topics on wave propagation and fluid mechanics. At undergraduate and graduate levels, students will be rigorously trained in fluid mechanics, numerical simulations and turbulence modeling. At all levels, efforts will be made to hire students from underrepresented groups in science and engineering.
