Events Calendar

AME Department Seminar

Speaker: Beverley J. McKeon , Professor of Aeronautics. Graduate Aerospace Laboratories. California Institute of Technology. Pasadena, CA.

Talk Title: Deconstructing (and Reconstructing) Wall Turbulence

Abstract: The literature contains several distinct approaches to understanding the flow physics underlying wall turbulence, including the characterization of velocity statistics and spectra, identification of dominant coherent structures and analysis of the amplification properties of the Navier-Stokes equations, to name a few. However the detailed connections between these views of the same fluid system have proved elusive. The critical layer framework for turbulent pipe flow proposed by McKeon & Sharma (J. Fluid Mech, 2010) provides a simple model by which to understand both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the structure of wall turbulence. This framework utilizes an input-output formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations to analyze the transfer function and identify the dominant forcing and response mode shapes at each combination of frequency, streamwise and spanwise wavenumbers relevant to experimental observations. In this talk I will describe and expand the framework, demonstrating that our model gives important predictive information about both the statistical and structural make-up of wall turbulence, and can be used to understand some simple experiments designed to manipulate the spectral distribution of turbulent energy. Implications for both the classical picture of wall turbulence and control of turbulent flows will be discussed.

Biography: Beverley McKeon is a Professor of Aeronautics in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech (GALCIT). Her research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to manipulation of boundary layer flows using morphing surfaces and fundamental investigations of wall turbulence at high Reynolds number. She was the recipient of a Presidential Early Career award (PECASE) in 2009 and an NSF CAREER award in 2008. Prior to joining GALCIT, she was a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow and postdoc in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London, after receiving a B.A. and M.Eng. from the University of Cambridge (1996) and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University (2003) under the guidance of Lex Smits.

More Info: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/index.shtml#upcoming

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy

Event Link: http://ae-www.usc.edu/seminars/index.shtml#upcoming