News
1/2024: Sabbatical Spotlight on Mechanical Design
Prof. Mendelson spent the Fall 2023 semester at Olin College in Needham, MA. Read Olin's feature on it here:
https://www.olin.edu/articles/story-two-faculty-complete-sabbaticals-olin
11/2023: APS DFD 2023
Prof. Mendelson presented as part of the "Middle Grade Anthology" team at the Stories of Women in Fluids mini-symposium at APS DFD. Find out more about the Stories of Women in Fluids Initiative here.
She also shared FILM work on "Imaging configurations and partial occlusion mapping for multi-camera volumetric velocimetry around bodies" in the technical sessions.
6/2023: ISPIV 2023
Prof. Mendelson presented our work (with FILM student Zhian Zhou '25) "Particle reconstruction in partially-occluded volumes for multi-camera 3D velocimetry" at the 15th International Symposium on Particle Image Velocimetry in San Diego, CA. Paper available here.
4/2023: Congratulations to FILM Alumni GRFP Recipients
Join us in congratulating FILM alumni Christina Lau (Engineering - Electrical and Electronic Engineering), Albany Blackburn (Physics and Astronomy - Particle Physics), and Kausik Das (Mathematical Sciences - Applied Mathematics), who have been awarded NSF GRFP fellowships for 2023!
2/2023: New FILM Publication
FILM student Derek Li (HMC Math/Physics '23) and Prof. Mendelson have published a new paper "Volumetric measurements of wake impulse and kinetic energy for evaluating swimming performance" in Experiments in Fluids. Article available here.Â
Along with the paper, we have released an open source matlab toolbox to perform impulse and kinetic energy calculations on volumetric velocimetry data, available on github.
11/2022: FILM at APS DFD 2022
HMC students Rafael Burger (Engineering 2024), Peyton TenEyck (Engineering 2024), and Zhian Zhou (Engineering 2025) joined Prof. Mendelson at the 2022 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting in Indianapolis, IN. Peyton and Rafael presented the talk "Froude number and flexibility effects on partially-submerged bio-inspired propulsors" in the Soft Body Slamming Fluids focus session and Zhian presented the poster "Volume reconstruction around bodies for 3D PIV."
Peyton presenting in the biggest auditorium at the conference.
11/2021: FILM at APS DFD 2021
HMC students Benjamin Jin (Engineering 2022), Derek Li (Math/Physics 2023), and Olivia Yin (CS/Math 2024) joined Prof. Mendelson at the 2021 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting. Ben and Olivia presented the poster "Characterizing the thrust production of partially-submerged flapping propulsors" and Derek presented the talk "Analysis of resolution and noise propagation in volumetric PIV measurements of kinetic energy, impulse, and their derivatives."
Ben, Olivia, Derek, and Prof. Mendelson at the APS DFD 2021 poster session.
5/2021: Intelligent and Bio-inspired Mechanics Seminar
Prof. Mendelson presented virtually on "Biological and Bio-Inspired Propulsion for Water Exit" as part of the Intelligent and Bio-Inspired Mechanics seminar series hosted by Queen's University.
Video from the seminar is available at:
https://youtu.be/voRJsdSKQl8
9/2020: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics Paper
Prof. Mendelson's work on fin interactions during archer fish jumping has been accepted for publication in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. In this study, we used 3D PIV to characterize multiple modes of interaction between the anal and caudal fins during archer fish jumping. In the context of bioinspired propulsion, these observations illustrate that multiple beneficial propulsive behaviors can be achieved with the same set of actuators.
1/2020: Physics of Fluids Paper and Scilight
Our collaborative work on computational fluid dynamics simulations of jumping archer fish has been published in Physics of Fluids. In this study, we used high-speed imaging and photogrammetry to create 3D models of the fish body and fins and simulated the flow structures produced by the fish in both water and air. Notably, we were able to add/remove fins from the body and re-run the simulations, which showed that the pectoral fins (in addition to the tail) contribute to the thrust produced by the fish. This work was also selected as an AIP Featured article and an AIP Scilight.
This work is in collaboration with MIT (Prof. Alexandra H. Techet), Stony Brook University (Prof. Ali Khosronejad, Dr. Dionisios Angelidis, Dean Fotis Sotiropolous), and Hanyang University (Prof. Seokkoo Kang)
11/2019: FILM at APS DFD
Prof. Mendelson presented "Flapping locomotion across a water-air interface", the first completely FILM-authored conference talk, at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting in Seattle, WA. HMC students Ethan Greenberg, Wing-Yee Law, and Chris Paniagua were all co-authors on the presentation.
11/2018: Gallery of Fluid Motion Video
Prof. Mendelson was part of a team that produced the video "A fish out of water: the archer fish's rocket-like launch" for the 2018 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Gallery of Fluid Motion. This work is in collaboration with MIT (Prof. Alexandra H. Techet) and Stony Brook University (Dr. Dionisios Angelidis, Prof. Ali Khosronejad, Ryan Burgert, Richard McKenna, Dean Fotis Sotiropolous).