Focus areas: thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat and mass transfer processes, all of which may get involved in engineering practice
Faculty in the thermal fluid group: Drs. Sayantan Bhattacharya, Ruey-Hung Chen, Charles Eggleton, Ronghui Ma, Carlos Romero-Talamas, Meilin Yu, and Liang Zhu
Real-world applications of thermal-fluids sciences include general areas such as energy and energy conversion systems, stationary and mobile powerplants, biological, pharmaceutical, and medical systems, and advanced manufacturing processes. Specific topics of interest can be found, for example, in renewable energy, thermal management and phase-change heat and mass transfer, jet engines and turbomachinery, supersonic combustion for hypersonic propulsion, plasma-assisted flow control, flow-structure interaction as in wind and hydrokinetic turbines, turbulent flows, biological and bio-inspired flows, microfluidics and nanofluidics, delivery of therapeutic agents, biological heat and mass transport, cell deformation in blood flows, and additive manufacturing. Tools for the study include experimental and diagnostic techniques, theoretical analysis, computational and modelling methodology, and/or a combination of multiple tools