Transition and Flow Control Lab

News

Project associate positions are available, see Opportunities. Salary as per DST - ANRF norms.
ANRF National Post-Doctoral Fellowship calls are open. Interested aspirants may contact sumit.tambe[at]iitm[dot]ac[dot]in. More details at The Electronic Project Proposal Management System, For ANRF
Dr Sumit Tambe receives ANRF Advanced Research Grant to probe "Low-cost event-based diagnostics of turbulent flows using neuromorphic cameras" (Dec 2025).
Research intern Abel viji George presents his work in the international conference Fluocome 2025 at Delft The Netherlands (Nov 2025).

Low-speed wind tunnel

Test section: 0.5m x 0.5m x 2m
Speed range: 0 - 30+ m/s
Contraction ratio 1:9
Variable frequency drive

Spectral POD mode in the rotating disk boundary layer transition emerging from the low-cost time resolved PIV.

About PI

Dr. ir. Sumit Tambe

Assistant Professor,
Aerospace Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM).

Research interests:

Rotating and flat-plate boundary-layer transition,

Roughness-induced flows,

Turbomachinery flows,

Experimental aerodynamics: Particle Image Velocimetry, Infrared Thermography, Schlieren, Modal decomposition techniques (POD, sPOD, DMD, etc).

Aircraft design

Education

2017-2022 PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands

2015-2017 MSc in Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands

2009-2013 BTech in Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India

Experience

2025- present Assistant Professor (Grade I), Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

2025- 2025 Assistant Professor (Grade II), Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, India.

2023-2025 DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellow, Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India

2022-2023 IoE Postdoctoral Fellow, Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India

2013-2015 Scientist/Engineer SC, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Bangalore, India

Awards

2023 DST INSPIRE Faculty Award, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

2022 Silver medal (finalist) for the outstanding PhD thesis in the international competition: 17th ERCOFTAC Da Vinci Competition 2022, Lyon, France.

2022 IoE Postdoctoral Fellowship, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

2009-2013 Full government scholarship for BTech education at IIST, Thiruvananthapuram.

2000-2009 Merit list ranks (best 8th in Maharashtra) and scholarships through national-and state-level competitive exams, including IIT-JEE 2009.

Silver medal (finalist) at ERCOFTAC Da vinci award for an outstanding PhD thesis in Europe, 2022.

Glimpses of past work

Görtler number (G) scales the boundary layer transition on rotating cones. The turbulence onset occurs on G=8-10, r egardless of the axial inflow or rotational speed ratio S. (Sumit Tambe, Kentaro Kato, Zahir Hussain, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2024 (Rapids article))

New experimental method to detect the transitional flow features on rotating cones (Sumit Tambe, Ferry Schrijer, Arvind Gangoli Rao, and Leo Veldhuis, Experiments in Fluids, 2019)

Boundary-layer transition on a rotating cone; a composite of velocity fields obtained by particle image velocimetry and thermal footprints of spiral vortices obtained by infrared thermography processed with POD. (Sumit Tambe, Ferry Schrijer, Arvind Gangoli Rao, and Leo Veldhuis, AIAA Journal, 2023)

Non-axial inflow is found to delay the boundary-layer transition on a rotating slender cone (Sumit Tambe, Ferry Schrijer, Arvind Gangoli Rao, and Leo Veldhuis, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2021).

Detection of the spiral vortex footprints on the aero-engine nose-cone at cruise conditions (Sumit Tambe, Ferry Schrijer, Leo Veldhuis, and Arvind Gangoli Rao, Physics of Fluids, 2022)