This project titled, ‘MURI: Predicting Turbulent Multi-Phase Flows with High Fidelity - A Physics-Based Approach’, is supported by the Office of Naval Research under the 2017 MURI Program managed by Dr. Ki-Han Kim, Program Officer.

It involves an integrated computational, theoretical and experimental program to develop physical models and computational methods for multiphase flows. The proposed research spans the multiple scales from the dynamics/thermodynamics of water molecules to the macroscopic behavior of turbulent bubbly and cavitating flows. Our overall vision is to develop a new predictive capability for turbulent cavitating flows, that significantly reduces/eliminates empiricism and uncertainty.

Current Reynolds-averaged methodologies are unable to reliably predict phenomena such as cavitation inception, sheet to cloud transition, bubble entrainment, and bubble-induced acoustics. The proposed work will develop high-fidelity multiphase models, subgrid models and numerical methods which will allow applications involving these phenomena to be predicted with unprecedented fidelity.

Prof. Krishnan Mahesh of the University of Minnesota is the Principal Investigator and technical point of contact for the project. A diverse team of researchers from the U. Minnesota, Caltech, UC Santa Barbara, U. Iowa, U. Michigan, MIT, Johns Hopkins and Australian Maritime College work together on the program.

We are always interested in hiring strong new members. Please contact us if you are interested.