Deeper probes into forces shaping nature’s movement of liquids and gases promise progress in solving big technological challenges
Over the almost four decades he has been working in fluid dynamics, Werner Dahm has yet to see a lull in its upward trajectory as a springboard for progress in science, engineering, technology and the growth of industry.
The vigor of the field as a driver of innovation in developing potential solutions to some of the world’s most critical challenges was recently on display at the 74th annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics, or APS DFD, in Phoenix. 
Several faculty members and students in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering led sessions or gave presentations at the recent annual meeting the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics. The Fulton Schools faculty has more than a dozen members leading research in a range of pursuits in fluid dynamics to find solutions to science and engineering challenges in transportation, environmental management, medical care, energy, aerospace fields and other critical areas. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock Download Full Image
“This was one of the best APS DFD meetings I’ve attended in the past 40 years,” says Dahm, the Arizona State University Foundation Professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering; leader of the Laboratory for Turbulence, Combustion, and Propulsion; and founding director and chief scientist for ASU’s Security and Defense Systems Initiative.
The Nov. 21–23 event drew more than 2,400 participants (in person and virtually) from around the world to show a plethora of pursuits in fluid dynamics that Dahm says “span across a wide range of technological applications that are going to provide enormous benefits to society.”
Some of the researchers striving for those achievements are Dahm’s colleagues in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU, notably this year’s APS DFD conference chair, Professor Marcus Herrmann, and co-chair, Associate Professor Konrad Rykaczewski, along with many of their fellow faculty members in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of the seven Fulton Schools.
Taming turbulence opens path to new possibilities
As a branch of applied science focusing on the flow of liquids and gases and their interactions within various environments, fluid dynamics research can encompass explorations across a full spectrum of science and engineering endeavors.
Rykaczewski’s and Herrmann’s work includes multiple aspects of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, with applications in almost all technologies and systems in which air, liquids and gases are involved.
One of Herrmann’s concentrations is on turbulence, a major factor in the performance and resilience of every major mode of transport of people and materials, especially aviation.
Rykaczewski’s far-ranging research includes imaginative approaches to developing soft thermal materials and systems that insulate people and things against the effects of extreme heat.
The study of turbulence is also at the center of Associate Professor Yulia Peet's research, with particular applications in wind energy, aerospace and the mechanics of biological fluids, as well as in high-performance computing, an expanding field that is increasing the scope of nearly all areas of fluid dynamics research.
“Some of the new advances in fluids knowledge will help us design more effective medical devices and help solve environmental problems like air pollution,” Peet says.
This image of Earth’s surface chlorophyll, from the high-resolution Earth Systems Model of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, demonstrates that fluid dynamics is one of the biggest factors shaping physical environments throughout the world. Image courtesy of the NOAA
Controlling flows brings benefits for impactful pursuits
Multiphase and aerosol-laden flows for environmental and aerospace applications is one of Assistant Professor Mohamed Houssem Kasbaoui's area of expertise.
Airborne aerosols are very small solid or liquid particles that can suspend in the air. Some of them are a significant cause for concern in public health because they can spread germs and viruses. So, Kasbaoui’s latest research efforts lately have turned to studies related to the COVID-19 virus and the spread of the pandemic.
He is among those bringing more depth to the understanding of fluid dynamics by using the some of the latest and most advanced technologies to aid research, particularly high-fidelity computational models and massively parallel simulations on the largest supercomputers.
These impressively robust data-generating tools promise to provide deeper knowledge about the movement and characteristics of fluids and gases. They could, for instance, help industries more efficiently control the flows of gases and liquids through extensive pipelines, boost the effectiveness of pharmaceutical medications, enable extraction of energy from ocean waves and increase our understanding of blood flow to improve medical care, Kasbaoui says.
“With growing computing power, high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics is going to have a transformative impact on fields in which experimentation and trial-and-error approaches have been standard, such as geophysical and biological flows,” he says.
Environmental and air travel advances on the horizon
Some of Assistant Professor Jeonglae Kim's work involves the simulation of high-speed turbulent flows involving multiphysics, flow control and optimization. Some of that work involves more deeply probing the multiscale interactions of turbulence.
One aim of Kim’s work in this area is to get a clearer understanding of the flows of various kinds of particles in different environments. Kim says more in-depth knowledge could reveal useful information about the movement of air pollution, and the increasing environmental contamination from microplastics in air, water and soil.
Kim’s primary focus is on aeroacoustics, mainly the intense generation of sound by turbulent flows that cause the most common physical and sensory effect associated with the propagation of sound from jet engines and their surrounding environments.
There is a growing interest from governments and industry to enable more supersonic and hypersonic flight. Supersonic flight involves traveling through the air at speeds greater than the speed of sound. Hypersonic flight is flight in the atmosphere below approximately 150 miles at speeds of Mach 5 and above (five times the speed of sound, which varies at different altitudes). At that speed, the chemical and molecular dissociation of air becomes significant and creates high heat loads that cause thermal stress.
Using hypersonic systems allows for more speed and maneuverability in situations when they are most needed. The development of hypersonics is advancing across the globe, and the U.S. Department of Defense has made hypersonic flight a key mission priority. Supersonic flight would allow more people to travel faster over long distances.
The problem is the disturbingly powerful sonic booms produced by these types of flight. Kim hopes to design computer simulations of methods that remedy the disruptive acoustic drawbacks.
Advanced computer modeling and simulation now being used in fluid dynamics raise the possibility of solving the problem, he says.
Pictured at the recent international gathering in Phoenix of engineers and scientists doing work in fluid dynamics are (from left) Fulton Schools mechanical engineering doctoral students Shuai Shuai and Himanshu Dave, Assistant Professor Mohamed Houssem Kasbaoui and aerospace engineering doctoral student Johnathan Van Doren. Shuai, Dave and Van Doren were among students selected to give presentations at the event on the progress of their fluid dynamics research. Photo courtesy of Mohamed Houssem Kasbaoui
Dodging the threats of pollution and climate change
Using laboratory experiments, Assistant Professor Gokul Pathikonda is also trying to answer big questions to provide a clearer picture of the fundamental nature of turbulent fluid flow and its impacts — a forward leap he says would lay the groundwork for a more encompassing “geophysical fluid dynamics” and to move us closer to an array of solutions for global challenges.
Understanding turbulence would overcome many obstacles in the aerodynamics of aviation and other forms of transport, such as ships, and also provide better ways to predict the flow of pollutants in the air and in water, Pathikonda says. For example, advances in the field could enable prediction of potential environmental threats posed by climate change and help develop effective mitigation strategies, he says.
Other experts suggest fluid dynamics research might also reveal how progress in the field could contribute to developing and generating cleaner energy and possibly enable more ambitious space exploration.
Fluid dynamics problem-solving is also resulting from the probing inquiries of other Fulton Schools faculty members, including Regents Professor Ronald Adrian, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and Associate Professors Heather Emady, Huei-Ping Huang, Kangping Chen, Taewoo Lee and Ronald Calhoun.
Continuing support from U.S. government and industry sources — the U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation among them, along with corporate funding from major companies — provides validation that these and other ASU researchers are collectively viewed as a potentially potent force in breaking new ground in fluid dynamics.
Preparing tomorrow’s fluid dynamics innovators
Dahm sees positive signs that the impact of the Fulton Schools’ progress in fluid dynamics will continue through the students he and his colleagues are educating.
A former chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force, Dahm points to students who have helped him move forward in his work on computational simulations of turbulent flows and their applications in aircraft and rocket propulsion systems.
Students, for instance, have taken it upon themselves to devise “entirely new approaches” to solving problems and improving processes to advance research, Dahm says, making him confident that he will be seeing some of them among the fluid dynamics leaders of the future.
ASU leads the space station's University Advisory Council
Orbital Reef, a partnership between Blue Origin and Sierra Space that includes a consortium of universities led by Arizona State University, was selected today by NASA through a funded Space Act Agreement to design a commercially owned and operated space station in low Earth orbit (LEO) in the amount of $130 million.
NASA’s Commercial LEO Development program aims to shift NASA’s research and exploration activities in LEO to commercial space stations, helping stimulate a growing space economy before the International Space Station is retired. The Orbital Reef team also includes Boeing, Redwire Space and Genesis Engineering Solutions.
Orbital Reef’s shared infrastructure will support the proprietary needs of diverse U.S. and international users, tenants and visitors, including those representing research, industry, government and the commercial sector. Features such as reusable space transportation and advanced automation can minimize cost and complexity to enable the widest range of users. Accommodations, vehicle docking ports and utilities can all be scaled with growth in market demand.
“We are pleased that NASA supports the development of Orbital Reef, a revolutionary approach to making Earth orbit more accessible to diverse customers and industries,” said Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs for Blue Origin. “In addition to meeting the ISS partners’ needs, the Orbital Reef mixed-use space business park will offer reduced costs and complexity, turnkey services and inspiring space architecture to support any business. No one knows how commercial LEO markets will develop, but we intend to find out.”
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative and principal investigator of the NASA Psyche mission, said, “We’re grateful to receive NASA’s support for Orbital Reef’s shared mission. The University Advisory Group is ready to embark on this new challenge — to create guidelines for ethical research and manufacturing, to assemble experts in every field, and to create community connections to Orbital Reef that include science, engineering, art, history, philosophy and religion — all aspects of the human experience.”
Consortium members have already met to begin their work. Comprising 15 leading academic institutions with expertise in space and microgravity research, the University Research Advisory Council will focus on academic community needs, stimulate research, advise novice researchers, evolve standards of conduct and lead STEM outreach.
University Advisory Council members include:
- Arizona State University.
- Colorado School of Mines.
- International Space University.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Oxford University.
- Purdue University.
- Southwest Research Institute.
- Stanford University.
- University of Central Florida.
- University of Colorado at Boulder.
- University of Florida.
- University of Michigan.
- University of Texas at El Paso.
- University of Texas Medical Branch.
- Vanderbilt University.
These partners bring together all the expertise to develop, integrate and operate Orbital Reef’s transportation and destination systems and services:
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Blue Origin leads development of the station’s infrastructure, large-diameter metal modules, last-mile space tug and reusable heavy-lift New Glenn launch system.
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Sierra Space leads development of the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) and small-diameter metal node modules, and Dream Chaser spaceplane for crew and cargo transportation with runway landing anywhere in the world.
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Boeing leads development of the station’s operations and maintenance and science module, and Starliner crew capsule.
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Redwire Space leads microgravity research payload development and operations, large deployable structures and the Orbital Reef digital twin.
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Genesis Engineering Solutions develops the Single Person Spacecraft for routine operations and tourist excursions.
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Arizona State University leads the University Advisory Group, a global consortium of universities for research advisory services and public outreach.
Orbital Reef’s vision is to provide an “address in orbit” for anyone. Early customers may include NASA, its traditional ISS partners and non-traditional governments and agencies needing easier access to space. The station will grow as markets grow, including commercial industries such as research and manufacturing, media and entertainment, sports and gaming, and adventure travel and tourism.
For more information, visit www.orbitalreef.com.
Arizona State University press contact: Sandra Leander, sandra.leander@asu.edu. Top image courtesy of Orbital Reef
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