Events Calendar

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series

Speaker: Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung, Assistant Professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA

Talk Title: Fluid Mechanics of Drinking and Diving

Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series

Abstract: Drinking is defined as the animal action of taking water into the mouth, but to fluid mechanists, it is simply one kind of fluid transport phenomena. Classical fluid mechanics show that fluid transport can be achieved by either pressure-driven or inertia-driven processes. In a similar fashion, animals drink water using pressure-driven or inertia-driven mechanisms. For example, domestic cats and dogs lap water by moving the tongue fast, thereby developing the inertia-driven mechanism. We will investigate how cats and dogs drink water differently and discuss the underlying fluid mechanics.
Diving is the activity of falling from air into water, which is somewhat dangerous due to the impact. Humans dive for entertainments less than 20 meters high, however seabirds dive as a hunting mechanism from more than 20 meters high. Moreover, most birds including seabirds have a slender and long neck (13~25 vertebrae) compared to many other animals, which can potentially be the weakest part of the body upon axial impact compression. Motivated by the diving dynamics, we investigate the effect of surface and geometric configurations on structures consisting of a beak-like cone and a neck-like elastic beam. A transition from non-buckling to buckling is characterized and understood through physical experiments and an analytical model.

Biography: Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics (formerly, Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics), Virginia Tech. Dr. Jung received his PhD in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin and spent two years at the Courant Institute, NYU. Prior to Virginia Tech, he was a math instructor at MIT for two years. His research interests are a variety of fluid mechanics problems occurring in biological systems.

Host: Professor Paul Ronney

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Valerie Childress