Research Activities

The research activities of each faculty member in the Department are briefly introduced. These
include active research projects and external fuding. Most of the faculty members of the
Department also list their research activities on their personal homepages, which can be accessed
from the faculty member list.

Professor Y. Andreopoulos
Research Interests:

• Vortical & Dissipative Motion
  
• Jet-Shock Interaction
  
• CFD Methods for High Speed Flows
  
• Compressible Turbulence
  
• Shock Wave Detection
  
• Shock Interaction with Composites
  
• Measurement of Aerodynamic Forces
• Microactuators, smart materials and MEMS
• Structure of Turbulence
• Expansion Wave Study
• Environmental Flows
  
• Oil Spills - Marine Area Impacted by Kuwait Oil Spills in the Persian Gulf
• Underwater Pipelines - Effects of surface waves on underwater pipelines
• Hybrid Bus Propulsion - Hybrid Electric bus propulsion systems
• Dynamic Compression of Porous Media
• Blast Mitigation
• Nano Shock Tube: Molecular Dynamics Simulations
• Energy Harvesting from Fluid Flows
• Wind Energy
  

Professor F. Delale
Research Interests:

• Composite Materials. Damage and failure characterization and analysis of fiber
  reinforced composite systems under various loading conditions including low velocity
  and ballistic impact.
• Nanocomposites. Development and mechanical /electrical characterization of
  nanoclay and CNT reinforced composites. Properties prediction via micro/nano-mechanics
  modeling.
• Fracture Mechanics. Analysis of crack propagation in various structural materials
  systems including metals, ceramics and composites.
• Nonhomogeneous Materials. Analysis of functionally graded materials systems.
  Elasticity of nonhomogeneous materials.
• Structural Health Monitoring. Damage detection in structural composite systems
  via self sensing, strain gage measurements, piezoelectricity and fiber optics.

Professor L. Jiji
Research Interests: Heat Transfer
The following are currently active research projects in heat transfer:

• Phase Transformation with Energy Generation. This area finds applications in
  casting of nuclear waste material, cryosurgery, freezing of tissue, solar collectors and
  energy storage systems.
• Heat Transfer in Microchannels. This research is driven by miniaturization of
  microelectronic devices and extensive applications in medical and
  micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) such as micro heat exchangers, mixers,
  pumps, turbines, sensors and actuators. Attention is focused on developing theoretical
  solutions to convection heat transfer in microchannels.
• The Naked Mole Rat. Studies have uncovered an abdominal organ (caecum) in the
  naked mole rat which is maintained at lower than body temperature. This unusual
  phenomena motivated research directed at quantifying the heat sink strength of the
  caecum.
• Thermal Stress in Poultry. A major problem in the poultry industry is the impact of
  heat stress on the birds. This is a particularly serious problem in underdeveloped
  countries with hot climates. This research seeks to develop simple low cost solutions
  to the problem of high poultry mortality rate due to heat stress.
  

Professor M. Kawaji
Research Interests:

• Nuclear Reactor Thermal-hydraulics
• Subcooled flow boiling in Pressurized Water Reactors
• Use of self-rewetting fluids in energy systems such as pulsating heat pipes
• Enhancement of Critical Heat Flux using self-rewetting fluids
• Adiabatic gas-liquid two-phase flow in microchannels
• Phase change nano-emulsions for thermal energy storage
• Vibration effects on fluid-particle systems under microgravity
• Marangoni convection in liquid bridges under microgravity
• Thermal diffusion in binary and tertiary mixtures