Principal Investigator

Dr. S. Unnikrishnan obtained his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from The Ohio State University, with a thesis on developing techniques to identify noise source mechanisms in supersonic jets. Ongoing development of this work has produced computationally inexpensive far-field noise prediction tools and acoustic models for subsonic and supersonic jets. As a post-doctoral researcher at OSU, he worked on an energy-based approach that identifies Kovasznay-type modes in hypersonic transitional boundary layers, to understand the behavior of first and second modes of instability. High-fidelity simulations are an integral part of these studies, and are often complemented by state-of-the-art analysis techniques, involving modal and statistical tools. Current efforts aim to utilize hydrodynamic stability theory using operator-free approaches, to further fundamental understanding of unsteadiness and global instability mechanisms in these high-speed flows.