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Research Experience
Research Experience
July 2023 – Present
Assistant Professor (Gr. 1)
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Kandi, Sangareddy, Telangana, India - 502285
Feb 2023 – July 2023
Ramanujan Faculty Fellow
Thermodynamics and Combustion Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Chennai, India - 600036Jun 2018 – Jan 2023
Post-Doctoral Fellow
With Prof. Jacob Cohen
Technion Wind Tunnel Complex
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa, Israel - 3200003Sep 2017 – May 2018
Research Associate
With Prof. Jagadeesh Gopalan
Indian Institute of Science | Aerospace Engineering
Laboratory of Hypersonic and Shock wave Research
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India – 560012
Funded Projects
Funded Projects
2020 – 2021 | Ministry of Defense, Israel | Approx. 50,000 USD | during post-doctoral studies
Design and development of a hypersonic Ludwieg tunnel at M=6 to study the unsteadiness observed during leading-edge separation.
Principal Investigator: Jacob Cohen
Co-investigator: SK Karthick2021 – 2022 | Israel Aerospace In-dustries, Israel | Approx. 50,000 USD | during post-doctoral studies
Understanding the separated shear layer in a hypersonic cone-cavity configuration across a wide range of Reynolds numbers at M = 6.
Principal Investigator: Jacob Cohen
Co-investigators: SK Karthick, SR Nanda
2023 – 2028 | DST-SERB, India | Approx. 150,000 USD | during Ramanujan Faculty Fellow
Investigating the unsteady dynamics of shock-shear layer interactions in a confined supersonic cavity flow.
Principal Investigator: SK Karthick2024-2025 | Institute Seed Grant – IITH, India | Ap-prox. 30,000 USD | during IITH tenure
Physical aspects of shock-shear layer interactions in a confined supersonic cavity flow.
Principal Investigator: SK Karthick2024 – 2026 | JICA Friendship Grant 2.0, India | Approx. 25,000 USD | during IITH tenure
Deep sub-cavity in an open cavity flow in a compressible flow regime.
Principal Investigator: SK Karthick2024 – 2026 | DRDO-DRDL Re-search Grant, India | Approx. 55,000 USD | during IITH tenure
Investigation of end-wall acoustic loading on a deep duct present ahead of a recirculation bubble for a wide range of Mach numbers.
Principal Investigator: Dr. SK Karthick
Co-investigators: Dr. Niranjan Ghaisas, Dr. K. Gnanaprakash2024 – 2026 | DRDO-ASL CARS Research Grant, India | Approx. 101,700 USD | during IITH tenure
Design and development of an arc jet plasma facility for erosion testing.
Principal Investigator: Dr. SK Karthick
Co-investigators: Dr. K. Gnanaprakash2024-2025 | DRDO-CHESS CARS Research Grant, India | Approx. 12,000 USD | during IITH tenure
Simulation of aero-optical effects.
Principal Investigator: Dr. L. D. Chandrala
Co-investigators: Dr. SK Karthick2024 (6 months) | Technion IIT, Consultancy Project, Israel | ~3000 USD | during IITH tenure
Design and development of M6 hypersonic contoured nozzle.
Principal Investigator: Dr. SK Karthick2024-2025 (6 months) | IIT Kanpur, Consultancy Project, India | Approx. 1000 USD | during IITH tenure
Design and development of SLM type 3D-printed models for testing in hypersonic shock/Ludwieg tunnel.
Principal Investigator: Dr. SK Karthick
Co-investigators: Dr. M. Gopinath
Facilities Designed
Facilities Designed
2012 – 2017 | During doctoral studies
Free/confined blow-down jet facility: Augmented the existing blow-down unit at LHSR with extended capabilities units including screw compressor, refrigeration-type drier, additional air storage unit, modified stagnation chamber for high mass flow particle seeding, in-house designed, and developed liquid particle seeder, and integrated optical flow diagnostics like PIV, Rayleigh/Mie scattering, and ace-tone/OH fluorescence imaging.2018 – 2020 | During post-doctoral studies
Modular cold combustor flow facility: Designed and developed a testbed to study the mixing environment of an annular (cylindrical) combustor in a micro-gas turbine engine in a rectangular (cartesian) space so that optical measurements can be done. It is basically a suction-based wind-tunnel with a custom modified test-section. The facility has a capacity to produce 1–30 m/s of flow speeds simulating air-fuel mixing but in an air-air environment. The facility is integrated with simultaneous measurement of kinematic and scalar variables using PIV and io-dine-based fluorescence imaging.2020 – 2022 | During post-doctoral studies
Hypersonic Ludwieg tunnel: Designed and developed a hypersonic impulse flow facility for M = 6 using the Ludwieg tunnel concept. The facility has a test-section diameter of 75 mm with a stationary flow time of 12.5 ms. The unit has a capacity to produce repeated shots for a wide range of unit Reynolds numbers (~106 to ~107) and it is automated. The total pressure and temperature are varied between 3-10 bar and 300-500 K, respectively. Unsteadiness in the flow field is identified using high-speed nano-pulse schlieren/shadowgraphy, carbon-di-oxide based Rayleigh scattering, and unsteady pressure or temperature measurements.2023 – Present | During research and teaching at IITH
Development of cold and hot compressible flow facilities (wind tun-nels/free-jets): Three compressible flow wind tunnels (4” x 4”) are de-signed, constructed, and commissioned from scratch: 1. Open-circuit tran-sonic induction wind tunnel (covering Mach number from 0.1 to 1.02), 2. Open-circuit blow-down type supersonic wind tunnel (covering Mach number from 2.0 to 3.0), and 3. Short duration Ludwieg type hypersonic wind tunnel (covering Mach number from 6.0 to 8.0). Moreover, two free-jet facilities are also set up: 1. 10 mm compressible free jet facility up to Mach number 2.5 at 300 K total temperature and 10 bar total pressure, and 2. 15 mm air/nitrogen/argon plasma jet capable of generating exit total tem-perature of 8000 K at 5 bar total pressure.
Current Research Contributions (Primary research)
Current Research Contributions (Primary research)
Subsonic flow mixing: Development of a modular prismatic facility to mimic the cold flow mixing observed in the annular combustor of a micro-gas turbine engine through flow field abstraction. Studying the flow mixing field in terms of flow kinematics and scalar transport using 2D PIV and iodine based PLIF techniques through high-repetition rate laser system.
Transonic cavities: Identifying and attenuating the primary noise dispersion entities in a transonic flow cavities of different size and shaped through high-speed schlieren/shadowgraph imaging and 2D PIV measurements.
Supersonic and hypersonic shock-wave boundary layer interactions: Understanding the primary reason behind the range of unsteadiness for the axisymmetric spiked blunt bodies in a supersonic flow using high-speed shadowgraph and 2D PIV studies.
Numerical studies: Using the commercial flow solver ,following problems are being studied – the effects of end walls in a linear array of flow elements in representing the translational periodicity using RANS; Supersonic double ramp inlets and the inherent unsteadiness at different throttling ratios using URANS; shock-wave boundary layer interactions observed in axisymmetric spiked bodies and rectangular blunt bodies using DES; supersonic confined jet mixing characteristics using LES;
Previous Research Contributions (Primary contributions)
Previous Research Contributions (Primary contributions)
Particle seeder: Development and integration of modified Laskin nozzle based atomizer, mister, and vapor generator for seeding the high flow rates encountered in the supersonic tunnels, jet facilities and hypersonic shock tunnels towards PLMS, PIV, and PLIF studies.
Supersonic ejector flow visualization: both rectangular and axisymmetric using planar laser Mie scattering (PLMS) techniques at higher acquisition rates.
Rectangular supersonic ejector: flow kinematics and scalar transport studies using two-dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) and acetone planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF). Near-field noise measurements to understand duct acoustics and shock oscillations.
Supersonic conical and lobed nozzle: High-speed nano-pulse exposure schlieren/shadowgraph studies, PLMS, PIV and PLIF towards the flow mixing characterization in a free jet environment. Near-field noise measurements to understand jet screech and turbulent mixing noise.
Data-driven methods: Processing and understanding the flow mixing behavior of high-speed jets using modal decomposition techniques from passive scalar based image visualization techniques.
Ground-effects of projectiles: Experimental and computational (RANS) studies of ground-effects on the terminal ballistics of projectiles and the deviant trajectory estimation through point-mass approach.
Previous Research Contributions (Co-assisted contributions)
Previous Research Contributions (Co-assisted contributions)
Rectangular supersonic wall jet: Aeroacoustics and shock interaction studies using high-speed schlieren, 2D PIV, and unsteady pressure measurements.
DBD plasma based flow control on subsonic and supersonic wall jets: flow kinematics studies using two-dimensional PIV, and schlieren imaging.
Blast waves: Imaging of blast wave from regular shock-tube, conical shock-tube, and Reddy tube using high-speed schlieren, color-schlieren and shadowgraph.
Miniature shock-tubes: Identifying the OH radicals behind the blast wave using OH-PLIF from the in-situ designed miniaturized detonation driven shock-tubes.
Hypersonic shock tunnel: Measurements of spatiotemporal density non-uniformities in the freestream flow emanating from the hypersonic shock tunnel nozzle using humid air, acetone and carbon dioxide based laser scattering in both low and high enthalpy tunnels.
Hypersonic shock tunnel in Ludwig mode: Integration of laser based optical flow diagnosis for PLMS studies. Experiments in hypersonic jet in cross-flow, mist-based surface cooling studies of bodies at hypersonic speeds, and visualization of shear layer interactions of spiked bodies in hypersonic flows.
Auto-rotation of plant seeds: Flow kinematics studies using 2D-PIV measurements and tip vortices visualization using laser scattering methods in small vertical subsonic tunnel.
Micro-biological studies: High-speed imaging of rotifiers (micro organism) behaviour during the feeding time towards the understanding of bio mechanics of the organism and flow kinematics around the habitat.
Breathing studies: High-speed schlieren and 2D PIV measurements towards the identification of dispersion characteristics of human exhaust in the ambient and also to understand the thermal dissipation from the human body during yoga type of exercises.
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