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The next seminar is on December 12, 2025!
Remote Colloquium on Vortex Dominated Flows (ReCoVor) is an online seminar series that emerged out of the need to facilitate scientific engagement in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread social-distancing measures had handicapped what had historically been a fundamental tenet of scientific inquiry - the exchange of new ideas, critical feedback, and engagement with the broader scientific community. In view of this challenge, ReCoVor was created to serve as a forum for encouraging scientific discussion with a focus on graduate students and early stage researchers. ReCoVor was also meant to provide a platform for these researchers to regain some of the opportunities lost for presenting their work to a larger scientific community and for networking, which had resulted from cancelled conferences, collaborative visits, on-campus seminars, etc. Despite the fact that the pandemic is now in our rear-view mirror, there has been overwhelming support for continuing this online series, and, in fact, the membership and participation in the series have continued to grow.
As suggested by the name, this colloquial series is focused on the flow physics of unsteady, vortex-dominated flows, particularly as it applies to fluid-structure interaction, bioflight/swimming, physiological flows, massively separated flows, and other such shear flows. If the flow is unsteady and it involves multiple interacting vortices that induce important effects on the flow, then this research probably belongs in this colloquium. Experimental, computational, and/or analytical contributions are all welcome.
Rajat Mittal (JHU), Jeff Eldredge (UCLA), Anya Jones (UCLA), Karen Mulleners (EPFL), Karthik Menon (Georgia Tech)
Diederik Beckers (Caltech) & Hanieh Mousavi (UCLA)
Upcoming seminar: December 12, 2025
Upcoming seminar: December 12, 2025
100A: Getting smarter overnight: towards self-exploring automated experiments for studying unsteady vortex-dominated flow phenomena
100A: Getting smarter overnight: towards self-exploring automated experiments for studying unsteady vortex-dominated flow phenomena
Karen Mulleners, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Abstract: Typical unsteady vortex-dominated flows like those involved in bio-inspired propulsion, airfoil separation, bluff body wakes, and vortex-induced vibrations can be prohibitively expensive to simulate and impossible to measure comprehensively. These examples are governed by non-linear interactions, and often involve moving boundaries, high-dimensional parameter spaces, and multi-scale flow structures. The classical way to get around these challenges is to reduce the experimental complexity by using canonical motions or simplified unsteady inflow conditions. To complement these canonical experiments, we can design self-exploring automated experiments that combine the automation of the experimental pipeline with data-science tools to increase experimental throughput and expedite scientific discovery. Such automated experiments can explore and exploit higher-dimensional parameter spaces and potentially cover more realistic and technically relevant unsteady conditions compared to what is traditionally feasible with supervised canonical experiments.
In this tutorial, we will provide examples and share experiences on how to design and improve your own self-exploring automated experiment, with special attention to cyber-physical systems.
Biography: Karen Mulleners is an associate professor in the institute of mechanical engineering in the school of engineering at EPFL. She is the head of the unsteady flow diagnostics laboratory (UNFoLD). She is an experimental fluid dynamicist who focuses on unfolding the origin and development of unsteady flow separation and vortex formation. Karen studied physics in Belgium (Hasselt University, previously Limburgs Universitair Centrum) and the Netherlands (TU Eindhoven). She received her PhD in mechanical engineering from the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany in 2010 for her work on dynamic stall on pitching airfoils that she conducted as a member of the German aerospace centre (DLR) in Göttingen. Before joining EPFL in 2016, Karen was a (non-tenure track) assistant professor at the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany.
Details
Details
Format
Format
Two 15-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A
Two 15-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A
When?
When?
Friday, every two weeks, at 11am Eastern Time / 8am Pacific Time.
Friday, every two weeks, at 11am Eastern Time / 8am Pacific Time.
Where?
Where?
Zoom, of course! A Zoom link with password will be provided to registered members.
Zoom, of course! A Zoom link with password will be provided to registered members.
Contact
Contact
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