9361543 Kelkar Funded under and SBIR Phase 1 grant, research is to be conducted on mixing in agitated vessels stirred by a rotating impeller. While such mixers have been in use for a very long time, predicting mixing performance in a new design is still highly empirical and uncertain. This research is to develop a computer model of the process based on a novel method for allowing the method to couple the rotating flow near the impeller with the more irregular non-rotating flow elsewhere in the mixer. Software is to be developed for dealing with this situation as a tool for optimization and scale-up. Beyond permitting mixing equipment manufacturers to create optimized designs with such a predictive tool, the code will have other possible applications in all fluid systems where only parts of the flow are rotating. ***
