Achievement

Trainee Luis Alvergue (Electrical Engineering, EE), co-advised by Professors Gu (EE) and Acharya (Mechanical Engineering) reports the development of a reduced order model (ROM) using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) and a Galerkin Projection that approximates the dynamics of the discretized Navier Stokes equations. The ROM consists of a set of nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations and is shown to reproduce the flow dynamics accurately. Luis has designed a robust H-infinity observer based controller which seems to address the weaknesses of previous efforts. Luis is working closely with Mechanical Engineering doctoral student Hessam Babaee who is working on Computational Fluids based optimization. The goals of both students are directed at optimizing the cooling of turbine blades. Luis and Hessam are working to demonstrate that the same optimum solutions for film cooling are obtained with two different approaches.