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My major interests have been in fluid dynamical problems associated with aerospace and atmospheric sciences. A connecting link between the two is that turbulent fluid flow plays an important role in both fields.
In aerospace problems, both fully turbulent flow and the transition to and from that state are at one and the same time of both practical and fundamental scientific interest. Turbulence has remained ‘the chief outstanding difficulty of the subject’ for about a hundred years now! Transition from laminar to turbulent flow, as well as the less widely studied reverse transition from turbulent to laminar, have been a major area of my research. The ubiquity of these problems was dramatically revealed recently when we showed (in collaborative work with NAL scientists, sponsored by Boeing) that the swept wings characteristic of modern transport aircraft can sometimes experience several transition cycles within the immediate neighbourhood of the leading edge. More recently I have been interested in the design of optimal wing planforms for propeller-driven aircraft that enhance the inherently greener characteristics of the propeller compared to turbojet/fan engines.
In the atmosphere turbulent flow in the tropics has a strongly convective character, and the laws governing it at low winds are of great interest in monsoon predictions. New scaling laws for such tropical boundary layers have been proposed, and these have improved prediction skills in atmospheric circulation models. Cloud flows are a major area of interest, and recent laboratory experiments have successfully simulated the form, evolution and entrainment characteristic of natural clouds. This development promises to provide greater insights into the important problem of cumulus cloud dynamics. Then there is the intriguing question of the possible connections between monsoon rainfall and solar processes. There is also the basic question of the mix of order and disorder in turbulent flow - in technology as in nature. These have been tackled using wavelet techniques.
Fluid flows remain fascinating because of their diversity, and of their fundamental scientific interest as well as their applications. We intend to pursue both in my group.
A hobby of mine is the attempt to understand the epistemology that drove classical Indic Science during its most productive age, during the 1500 years or so, from Caraka to Nilakantha.
Last Updated on 12 May 2008 |
