Research

•  Boundary-layer separation control in shock/boundary-layer interaction using a porous medium:

Shock waves often occur in flow over wings of passenger aircraft in the transonic speed range, causing wave drag (total pressure loss) and can lead to separation of the boundary layers which in-turn can cause effects like wing buffeting.  We are interested in the use of porous medium on wings as a passive (not requiring power for actuation)  control strategy. More... 

• Numerical investigation of flow-separation control with micro vortex generators:             

Vortex generators are roughness elements, which introduce vortex pairs in the wake downstream of the device. These vortices are considered to energize the near-surface flow, making it resistant to separation in the face of adverse pressure gradients. We have compared the flow-field downstream of different ramp-type micro (height less than local boundary layer) vortex generators using RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) simulations coupled to an immersed-boundary method, which renders the devices. More... 

• • Shock structure over a porous medium

• Drag prediction in immersed-boundary methods

In many engineering, fluid flows it is required to simulate the flow field around objects which may not have a very regular geometry. In such cases generating a grid which 'wraps' around the object can be difficult and in some cases not very feasible in terms of computational efficiency (this has got to do with domain decomposition, parallel processing, and load balancing). In such cases, the use of the immersed boundary method can make life easy for the 'numerical experimentalist'.  More... 

• Morphing wing aerodynamics

We are interested in investigation of the quasi-steady and unsteady aerodynamics of morphing wings using OpenFOAM and immersed-boundary methods. The motivation of airfoil morphing stems from reducing the drag during two distinct flight regimes –– loiter and dash –– with prescribed values of lift coefficient. The morphing of the airfoil section will be achieved using camber morphing. Aerodynamic characteristics of the morphing wing, assuming both quasi-steady and unsteady approaches, will be analysed. The results from these investigations will help in understanding the advantages of using morphing technologies from the standpoint of aerodynamics and help in developing morphing wing technologies for integration with UAVs. 

We are also interested in the investigation of morphing wing in flapping flight.

Positions: M.S (1);

Schematic of standard and slotted VG (Sandhu et al, 2018)

• 3-D Multi-block flow solver for turbulent high-speed flows

Finite-volume Explicit STructured 3 Dimensional (FEST3D) is an open-source Navier-Stokes solver for laminar / turbulent flows developed in my lab at Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Madras. This code is parallel and suitable for inviscid, laminar and turbulent flow simulations at low (subsonic) and high  (supersonic) speeds. We have verified the code against benchmark solutions provided on NASA’s validation and verification website. More...