Events Calendar

Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar

Speaker: Ilenia Battiato, Assistant Professor of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University

Talk Title: Transport Phenomena over Patterned Surfaces

Abstract: Coupled flows over patterned surfaces occur in a variety of natural phenomena, biological systems and industrial processes. Some example includes bioreactors, micro- and nano-patterned water filtration membranes, superhydrophobic ridges surfaces, and submerged vegetation, just to mention a few. Designing and optimizing the topology of the structure to achieve target performance at the system-scale (or macroscale) is still an open question since fully resolved numerical simulations are too prohibitive when a great disparity of scales between the pattern and the device exists. By treating the patterned surface as a permeable layer, we formulate a system of coupled Navier-Stokes/Brinkman equations, which is amenable of analytical solution for the mean filtration velocity inside the pattern, and allows one to uncover and quantify the relationship between microstructure and macroscopic response. We employ this effective-medium framework to model a number of physical systems including channel turbulent flows over arrays of carbon nanotubes, superhydrophobic ridged surfaces, and submerged vegetation. We finally investigate the appropriateness of treating the pattern as a porous medium by conducting experiments in microfluidic channels with controlled microtexture.

Biography: Dr. Battiato received her MSc. In Engineering Physics in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Engineering Science with a specialization in Computational Sciences from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at the University of California San Diego in 2010. She did her postdoctoral training in Theoretical Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen, Germany. In 2012 she joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Clemson University as assistant professor and then in 2014 the Mechanical Engineering Department at SDSU. In 2016, she moved to the department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University. Her research interests lie in theoretical/computational fluid mechanics and transport processes in porous media, multiscale and hybrid computational methods, effective medium theories, and multiphase flows. In 2015 she was awarded of the Department of Energy Young Investigator award in Basic Energy Sciences for her work on multiscale models of reactive transport in the subsurface.

Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/about/seminars/

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Ashleen Knutsen

Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/about/seminars/