Program - THMT-27

Background

Kyle Daun is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and Director of the Waterloo Laboratory for Inverse Analysis and Thermal Sciences (WatLIT). His research spans thermal radiation, inverse heat transfer, and optical diagnostics, with applications to combustion, nanoparticle metrology, industrial materials processing, and environmental monitoring. His current work includes the development of infrared and hyperspectral imaging methods for quantifying methane emissions and flare combustion efficiency.

Professor Daun received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manitoba, his MASc from the University of Waterloo, and his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining Waterloo in 2007, he was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow and research officer at the National Research Council Canada. He has authored more than 140 journal papers and co-authored the seventh edition of Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer as well as Thermal Radiation: An Introduction. He is a Fellow of ASME, an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow, and a recipient of the JQSRT Ray Viskanta Young Scientist Award.

Abstract

Flaring is routinely used to dispose of unwanted gas-phase hydrocarbons. In upstream oil and gas production, these gases are often associated gases composed primarily of methane, a concern because of its high global warming potential. In downstream petrochemical processes, flaring is used to dispose of a broader range of hydrocarbons that may present health and safety risks. Although flaring has long been assumed to achieve high conversion efficiencies, recent research has shown that this is not always the case. Poor flare performance may result, for example, from aerodynamic fuel stripping under high crosswinds or, particularly for downstream flares, excessive steam assistance. This presentation demonstrates how hyperspectral and multispectral imaging can be combined with high-performance computing and statistical data analysis to quantify flare emissions, with particular emphasis on identifying the flow structures and mixing processes that give rise to poor carbon conversion efficiency.

Background

Dennice F. Gayme is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She received her B. Eng. & Society in Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University in 1997, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998, and her Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 2010. Her research interests are in modeling, analysis and control of spatially distributed and large-scale networked systems, such as wind farms, wall-bounded shear flows, and power systems. She was a recipient of a JHU Catalyst Award in 2015, ONR Young Investigator and NSF CAREER awards in 2017, a Whiting School of Engineering Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020, and the Turbulence and Shear Flow Phenomena (TSFP12) Nobuhide Kasagi Award in 2022. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society (2024) and serves on the editorial boards of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Physical Review Fluids and PRX Energy.

Abstract

Abstract to be announced.

Background

Sina Ghaemi received his BSc in Aerospace Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, in 2006, his MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada, in 2009, and his PhD in Aerodynamics from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2013. He then joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019 and Full Professor in 2022. His broad research interests span measurement techniques, fundamentals of turbulent flows, active flow control, aerodynamics, and non-Newtonian fluids.

Abstract

This talk presents an active flow-control strategy that uses localized surface deformation to control large-scale turbulent structures in a turbulent boundary layer. The method combines a wall-mounted actuator with real-time flow sensing. The actuator is mounted flush with the wall and produces wall deformations with a flattened-Gaussian shape. These deformations generate flow perturbations that resemble very-large-scale motions (VLSMs). A real-time particle image velocimetry system detects the VLSMs upstream of the actuator. The measured streamwise velocity fluctuations are then used to drive the actuator. The first implementation used a constant-gain feedforward controller and attenuated the VLSMs at a downstream location. The strategy was later improved using data-driven methods. The results provide guidance for developing active surfaces for turbulence control and skin-friction reduction.

Background

Jean-Pierre Hickey is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Studies, in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where he leads the Multi-Physics Interaction Lab. His research focuses on complex multiphysics fluid problems in aerospace systems, particularly those involving strong coupling among thermodynamics, acoustics, chemical kinetics, and, inevitably, turbulence. He is co-chair of the NATO AVT-442 Research Task Group on nonequilibrium hypersonic turbulence and has contributed to other NATO working groups. Before joining the University of Waterloo, Professor Hickey was a research scientist in the Spacecraft Department at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Göttingen and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University. He received his PhD from the Royal Military College of Canada under the supervision of Professor Xiaohua Wu, his MSc from the Technical University of Darmstadt, and his bachelor’s degree from Polytechnique Montréal. In 2024, he was a visiting professor at CentraleSupélec in France.

Abstract

Heat and mass transfer in aerospace systems are characterized by interactions among turbulence, thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, multiphase transport, and surface conditions. This talk will explore three classes of problems relevant to aerospace flows: high-pressure supercritical flows, high-speed external flows, and transpiration-cooled boundary layer flows. Although these problems span different physical regimes, they share a common feature: heat and mass transfer fundamentally define the dynamics of these turbulent flows. In supercritical flows, steep variations in thermodynamic and transport properties reshape turbulent mixing and convective transport, even modifying the turbulent statistics. In high-speed external flows, non-adiabatic walls alter density, viscosity, and near-wall turbulence, with direct consequences for aerothermal loading. In transpiration cooling, the injection of coolant through a porous surface couples mass transfer, turbulence, and conjugate thermal transport. Across these three classes of problems, the talk will demonstrate how high-fidelity simulations can help explain and predict the coupled mechanisms governing aerospace propulsion and thermal-protection systems.

Background

Jiarong Hong is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. He served as founding CTO of Astrin Biosciences, Inc., a technology startup providing personalized cancer diagnostics and treatment solutions, and is co-founder and CTO of Particle4X, Inc., which specializes in AI-powered particle diagnostics. He received his B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2005 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 2008 and 2011, respectively. Since joining the University of Minnesota faculty in 2012, he has developed novel flow-imaging techniques known as flowscopes, which reveal flow and particle motion at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions across disciplines. These techniques address fundamental questions in fluid dynamics and enable research in oceanography, agriculture, robotics and sensing, microbiology, medicine, and materials science. He has published more than 130 journal papers and holds 18 international and U.S. patents. His honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. His research on wind energy, supercavitation, snow settling, drone swarms for wildfire characterization and monitoring, harmful algal bloom detection, COVID-19 transmission, and cancer diagnostics has received extensive international media and television coverage.

Abstract

Turbulence contains three-dimensional structures that remain difficult to access experimentally, particularly at dissipative scales and within the near-wall viscous sublayer. In this talk, I will discuss how digital holography can provide new measurements for fundamental turbulence research. First, I will present digital inline holographic vorticimetry using internally marked transparent tracers, which enables simultaneous Lagrangian measurements of three-dimensional velocity and vorticity near the Kolmogorov scale. These measurements reveal intermittent vortical structures and provide new insight into velocity–vorticity organization in turbulence. Second, I will discuss digital Fresnel reflection holography for resolving particle motions inside the viscous sublayer, where measurements reveal highly unsteady sublayer dynamics, including high- and low-speed flow patterns, spanwise meandering, acceleration intermittency, and localized U-shaped backflow events within (y⁺ ≤ 5). Together, these studies demonstrate how digital holography can uncover previously inaccessible small-scale and near-wall turbulent motions, opening new opportunities for discovery in fundamental turbulence research.

Background

Prof. Philippe Lavoie is a Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and his Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He co-founded the Center for Research in Sustainable Aviation based at UTIAS, for which he has been Associate Director since 2012. His current research interests include turbulence, flow control, and experimental aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. His research is focused on studying flow structures and instabilities associated with transitional and turbulent flows as a precursor to their control. He has successfully developed and implemented active flow control systems experimentally for several different wall-bounded and separated shear flows. Dr. Lavoie is an Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal and on the Editorial Board of Acoustics.

Abstract

Symmetric geometries can unexpectedly produce asymmetric flows. In the case of the BeVERLI Hill, a three-dimensional hill geometry developed to study non-equilibrium turbulent boundary layer dynamics, the wake is found to be bi-stable asymmetric under nominally symmetric inflow conditions. This bi-stability was found to be aperiodic with a time scale three orders of magnitude larger than the convective time scale. This represents a tremendous challenge for experiments and simulations attempting to capture and study this phenomenon. This presentation leverages a series of long-duration unsteady surface pressure, single-wire hot-wire anemometry (HWA) and stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (Stereo PIV) measurements to characterise the dynamics of the bi-stable wake downstream of the BeVERLI Hill. We will show that the average residence times for the bi-stable state ranged from order 10²–10⁴ times the convective time scale, and varied non-monotonically with Reynolds number. While the mode shape is robust to boundary conditions, the relative balance between the mirror-symmetric mode state is highly sensitive to small perturbations in the flow conditions. The switching between bi-stable states behaves randomly as a stationary Markov chain.

Background

Prof. Siva Nadarajah is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University and Director of the McGill Institute for Aerospace Engineering (MIAE). He leads the Computational Aerodynamics Group, where his research focuses on the development of next-generation algorithms for aerodynamic design optimization, high-order computational fluid dynamics, large-eddy simulation, adaptive mesh refinement, reduced-order modelling, and high-performance computing. He is internationally recognized for pioneering contributions to adjoint-based aerodynamic shape optimization and high-order numerical methods for complex aerospace flows.

In recent years, Prof. Nadarajah’s research has advanced nonlinear stability theory for flux reconstruction and discontinuous Galerkin methods, leading to some of the first provably stable high-order schemes for compressible flows. His recent publications have focused on entropy-stable discretizations, robust shock-capturing strategies, wall-modelled large-eddy simulation, and adaptive high-order methods for turbulent flows. He has also made significant contributions to adjoint methods for chaotic dynamical systems, including the development of stabilized approaches for sensitivity analysis and optimization of turbulent and chaotic flows, enabling reliable gradient computations for problems that were previously intractable using conventional adjoint techniques. His work integrates applied mathematics, computational science, and aerospace engineering to develop accurate, scalable, and industrially relevant algorithms for next-generation simulation and design.

Prof. Nadarajah serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications and is an AIAA Associate Fellow. He has collaborated extensively with industry partners including Airbus, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney Canada, CAE, and ANSYS, helping transition advanced computational methods into industrial aerospace applications. He has supervised numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who now hold leadership positions in academia and industry worldwide, and regularly organizes major international conferences and workshops in computational fluid dynamics, high-order methods, and scientific computing.

Abstract

Sensitivity analysis is of significant importance for optimization, uncertainty quantification, mesh adaptation, and flow control. At the same time, the predictive capability of these technologies depends critically on the robustness and accuracy of the underlying numerical discretization. Entropy-stable schemes have emerged as a powerful framework for high-fidelity turbulent flow simulation because they discretely satisfy the entropy inequality and provide nonlinear stability while preserving the fundamental mathematical structure of the governing equations. Beyond improving numerical robustness, entropy-stable methods offer a promising avenue for faithfully capturing the long-time dynamics of chaotic turbulent flows, including the growth of perturbations and the evolution of Lyapunov exponents that govern flow predictability.

While the conventional method of linearization and sensitivity analysis is well established for non-chaotic flows, it yields unbounded sensitivities for chaotic flows due to the presence of positive Lyapunov exponents [1]. Since high-fidelity scale-resolving simulations of turbulent flows are inherently chaotic, obtaining accurate sensitivities for such systems remains a fundamental challenge in computational fluid dynamics. Over the past decade, several shadowing-based methods have been developed to address this issue, including least-squares shadowing [2], non-intrusive least-squares shadowing [3], and stabilized march [4-5]. Among these approaches, the stabilized march method computes the shadow trajectory by imposing suitable boundary conditions on the adjoint differential equation and has been shown to converge to the correct long-time sensitivity as the integration time increases [4-5].

This keynote will present recent developments in adjoint-based sensitivity analysis for chaotic turbulent flows and examine their connection to stability and predictability theory. Applications of the stabilized march framework to three-dimensional turbulent flow simulations will be discussed, demonstrating accurate sensitivity predictions through comparisons with finite-difference calculations. The talk will also examine the role of entropy-stable high-order discretizations [6] in the computation of sensitivities and long-time statistics. Particular emphasis will be placed on the convergence of Lyapunov exponents, their interpretation as measures of predictability, and the influence of numerical discretization on the underlying chaotic dynamics. The impact of entropy-stable schemes, which are known to lack local energy stability [7], on sensitivity propagation and Lyapunov spectra will be explored. Together, these developments establish a unified perspective on sensitivity, stability, and chaos, providing new foundations for predictive simulation, optimization, and uncertainty quantification in turbulent-flow applications.

REFERENCES
[1] Lea, Daniel J. and Allen, Myles R. and Haine, Thomas W. N., Sensitivity analysis of the climate of a chaotic system, Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 2000.
[2] Wang, Qiqi and Hu, Rui and Blonigan, Patrick, Least Squares Shadowing sensitivity analysis of chaotic limit cycle oscillations, Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 267, pp. 210-224, 2014.
[3] Ni, Angxiu and Wang, Qiqi, Sensitivity analysis on chaotic dynamical systems by Non-Intrusive Least Squares Shadowing (NILSS), Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 347, pp. 56-77, 2017.
[4] Thakur, Pranshul and Nadarajah, Siva, A stabilized march approach to adjoint-based sensitivity analysis of chaotic flows, arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.00838, 2025.
[5] Thakur, Pranshul and Nadarajah, Siva, Adjoint of Least Squares Shadowing: Existence, Uniqueness and Coarse Domain Discretization, Journal of Scientific Computing, 105(2), 47.
[6] Cicchino, Alexander and Nadarajah, Siva, Discretely nonlinearly stable weight-adjusted flux reconstruction high-order method for compressible flows on curvilinear grids, Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 521, pp. 113532, 2025.
[7] Gassner, Gregor J and Svard, Magnus and Hindenlang, Florian J, Stability issues of entropy-stable and/or split-form high-order schemes: analysis of linear stability, Journal of Scientific Computing, Springer, Vol. 90, pp. 79, 2022.

Background

Prof. Radulescu joined the University of Ottawa as a junior faculty member in 2006 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2018. He obtained his Bachelor, Masters and PhD degrees from McGill University and was postdoctoral fellow at Stanford and Princeton Universities.

Prof. Matei Radulescu's expertise is in reactive compressible flows, and engages in both fundamental and applied research on gas dynamics of reactive systems and explosion safety in the process industries.

He has supervised the thesis work of more than 50 students at both graduate and undergraduate levels and published over 80 journal papers. He has presented invited plenary lectures at both national and international conferences on combustion and explosions and has won several best paper awards. He received the Bernard Lewis Fellowship for outstanding young researchers from the Combustion Institute. He is a Fellow of the Combustion Institute and currently serves on the Editorial Board of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science and Combustion Theory and Modelling.

Abstract

Detonation waves are the most extreme form of combustion waves, propagating at hypersonic speeds in reactive gases. Their extreme power is currently harnessed for supersonic and hypersonic propulsion applications, such as the pulse-detonation, oblique detonation engines and rotating detonation engines. Their control requires detailed knowledge of the reaction mechanism inside the wave structure. Starting from a review of the basic challenges of detonation propulsion, we review the current state of knowledge of the detonation structure and discuss the role played by turbulent transport phenomena triggered by hydrodynamic-type and the role of non-equilibrium effects at molecular scales.

Background

Carey Simonson is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and former Dean and Associate Dean in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). He has PhD (1998), MSc (1993) and BE (1991) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from USask and has spent 7 years in Finland as a visiting professor at the University of Oulu and researcher at the Technical Research Centre of Finland. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Oulu and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Professor Simonson is in the top 1% of the most-cited scientists in the world in the field of Buildings and Construction and has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles. He is an Associate Editor of the ASME Open Journal of Engineering and an editorial board member of Energy and Buildings. He has received several national and international awards for teaching, research and graduate student supervision such as: E.K. Campbell Award, ASHRAE Fellow, 2014 NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation, Finalist – 2018 GAGS Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentorship, USask Distinguished Graduate Supervisor Award, USask Distinguished Researcher Award, and USask Graduate Student Association Teaching Excellence Award.

Abstract

Buildings account for 35-40% of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and there is a growing global effort to increase the adoption of electric heat pumps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, frosting is a major problem for air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) in cold climates, and frosting can increase annual energy consumption by up to 35-40%. While it may be generally believed that frosting only happens in very cold climates, frosting has been found to be a problem for ASHPs when the outdoor air temperature is between +7°C to -15°C. These conditions occur in highly populated regions of North America and Europe, and some parts of Asia. This presentation will present research and development of a novel liquid-to-air membrane (LAMEE) which can be designed to create a frost-free heat pump in all climates. The frost-free heat pump is predicted to have, on average, a 50% higher coefficient of performance than a standard ASHP under conditions that typically lead to frosting, and annual energy savings as high as 35%.

Background

Hiroshi Terashima is an Associate Professor in the Division of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Hokkaido University. His research focuses on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for complex flows, including combustion, multiphase and supercritical flows, as well as fluid–structure interaction. His work spans the development of advanced numerical methods and physical models for CFD and their application to practical engineering problems. He received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tokyo. He has held research positions at the University of Tokyo, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), RIKEN, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), before joining Hokkaido University. In 2023-2024, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University in the United States.

Abstract

Combustion involves fundamentally complex physics, in which fluid dynamics is strongly coupled with chemical kinetics. Chemical reactions occur over a wide range of time scales, including very short time scales, yet can have a profound impact on the surrounding flow dynamics, leading to rich and complex flow behaviors. Therefore, adequate temporal resolution is essential for accurately capturing combustion phenomena. Furthermore, combustion often involves thin flame structures, imposing stringent requirements on spatial resolution. Combustion CFD is thus a challenging problem that requires sufficiently high temporal and spatial resolution. In this talk, I will introduce a highly efficient combustion CFD methodology that employs detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms. Our combustion CFD code combines a fast and robust time-integration scheme for stiff chemical reaction equations with a localized thickened flame model. These approaches reduce the computational cost by two to three orders of magnitude compared with conventional approaches while retaining the essential physics of combustion. In the latter part of the talk, I will present two applications: combustion instability in a rocket-engine configuration and knocking in an internal combustion engine configuration. In both cases, the strong coupling between fluid dynamics and chemical kinetics is essential for accurate predictions. For the combustion instability problem, the present results demonstrate that severe pressure oscillations occur under conditions with lower injection velocity ratios and mixture ratios. Furthermore, the effects of fuel type are clarified through a comparison of hydrogen and methane. For the knocking problem using n-heptane, the present combustion CFD is validated against experimental results, successfully capturing end-gas autoignition and the subsequent formation of strong pressure waves. In addition, the concept of autoignition-assisted flame acceleration is introduced as a potential approach to achieving knock-free combustion.

Background

Christina Vanderwel is a Professor in the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the University of Southampton, UK, where she leads research in experimental fluid mechanics, turbulent transport and scalar dispersion. She received her PhD from the University of Ottawa in 2014, investigating turbulent dispersion in uniformly sheared turbulence, and was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship in 2015 to study turbulent boundary layers over multiscale roughness. She currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (2020–2027) focused on using experiments to study the mechanisms of air pollution dispersion in complex urban environments. She serves on the committees of the UK Wind Engineering Society, the UK Fluids Network and the UK National Wind Tunnel Facility.

Abstract

Turbulent dispersion of scalars is fundamental to a wide range of fluid mechanics applications, including heat and mass transfer, environmental flows and pollutant transport. Despite its importance, predicting scalar transport in turbulent flows remains challenging due to the complex interactions between mean advection, turbulent mixing and flow structure. Engineering models often rely on simplified turbulence closure approaches, such as the turbulent diffusivity hypothesis, which may not adequately capture the anisotropic and spatially varying nature of scalar transport in complex flows.

This talk presents experimental studies of turbulent scalar dispersion using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) measurements in the University of Southampton Recirculating Water Tunnel. These measurements provide simultaneous velocity and concentration fields within the same measurement plane, enabling direct evaluation of turbulent scalar fluxes and the mechanisms governing scalar transport. Results will be presented across a range of flow configurations, from canonical turbulent boundary layers to indoor and urban environments, demonstrating the influence of shear, separation, ventilation and geometry on turbulent mixing. The talk will also explore opportunities for combining high-resolution experimental datasets with data-driven approaches to improve modelling of scalar dispersion.

Background

Dr. Patrizio Vena completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Carleton University in 2014. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, he joined the Aerospace Research Centre of the National Research Council Canada (NRC) in 2017 as a Research Officer. In 2023, he was appointed Adjunct Professor at Polytechnique Montréal.

Dr. Vena is an accomplished researcher with expertise in turbulent stratified flames, low-swirl flames, flame-wall interaction, hydrogen combustion, and the development of advanced laser-based optical diagnostics. Since joining the NRC, he has led a research program focused on the safe and effective integration of low/zero-carbon fuels into current and next-generation gas turbines. He has established, managed, and coordinated numerous research collaborations with industrial partners such as Siemens Energy Canada Limited, as well as academic institutions such as Polytechnique Montréal, McGill University, and the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Beyond his research activities, Dr. Vena is a strong advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), having initiated Aero’s Employee Experience Event Series, a platform encouraging open discussion to support, promote awareness, and advocate for improved EDI outcomes within the organization.

Abstract

Amid growing concerns for environmental sustainability and pollutant mitigation, the Government of Canada has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. In support of this, gas turbine manufacturers are transitioning to renewable, low/zero carbon fuels, with hydrogen, either blended with a parent hydrocarbon (e.g. natural gas) or as a pure fuel, emerging as a promising solution.

The talk will focus on complementary aspects of hydrogen combustion relevant to gas turbine applications. Spanning low-TRL academic research through mid-TRL technology development, the work draws on both small- and large-scale experimental capabilities. Topics include low-swirl flame shapes/stabilization mechanisms, flame-wall interaction in highly turbulent flows, micromix fuel injection, as well as single/clustered fuel injection nozzles, and thermoacoustic instability. These investigations are enabled by laser-based optical diagnostics, including phase-averaged serial OH planar laser induced fluorescence, phosphor particle streak velocimetry, and event-based visualization.

Background

Christian Hasse is a Full Professor at Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) and has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering since 2017. He directs the Institute for Simulation of Reactive Thermo-Fluid Systems, leading a team of more than 30 PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers. He earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from RWTH Aachen University in 2004 and worked in engine R&D at BMW Group in Munich before moving to academia. In 2010, he was appointed Professor of Numerical Thermo-Fluid Dynamics at TU Bergakademie Freiberg.

His research advances the fundamental understanding of reactive thermo-fluid phenomena through high-fidelity modeling and simulation, with a focus on emerging renewable energy carriers such as hydrogen, ammonia, e-fuels, sustainable aviation fuels, and metals. He considers engineering-based fundamental research a vital bridge between scientific curiosity and real-world impact. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and delivered over 25 invited plenary and keynote lectures. Committed to mentoring early-career researchers, he has supported many who later received prestigious international awards and faculty appointments.

He is a Fellow of The Combustion Institute and the Royal Aeronautical Society (UK), serves on the Boards of Directors of both the International and German Sections of The Combustion Institute, and received an ERC Advanced Grant (2024) for A-STEAM — Aluminum Steam Combustion for Clean Energy. He is the recipient of the 2026 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

Abstract

Reactive computational fluid dynamics (rCFD) has become an indispensable tool in both fundamental research and industrial design, from aero-engine combustors and gas turbines to energy-conversion systems. Its success rests on decades of model development, advanced numerics, and the exponential growth of computing power. Two disruptive trends are now reshaping the field. First, the energy transition: the shift from fossil to renewable fuels such as hydrogen fundamentally alters combustion behaviour and demands new high-fidelity models grounded in a deeper physical understanding. Second, the rise of exascale computing: next-generation supercomputers rely predominantly on GPUs, requiring a new generation of CFD software and numerical approaches. This plenary lecture connects both trends. It outlines the role of rCFD in the design of next-generation energy technologies, examines how hydrogen combustion differs from conventional fuels, and discusses the impact of GPU-based supercomputing on simulation software. It then shows how GPU-accelerated direct numerical simulation resolves the coupled turbulence, chemistry, and transport of hydrogen flames under technically relevant conditions, delivering physical insights once thought impossible, from fundamental science to industrial innovation.

Background

Gregory Kopp is a Distinguished University Professor at Western University where he also holds the ImpactWX Chair in Severe Storms Engineering and is the founding Director of the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory. His research focuses on reducing damage from extreme windstorms through wind tunnel testing, full-scale experiments, and post-tornado forensic investigations. He is a leading researcher into both the fundamental and practical aspects of building aerodynamics, having pioneered methods for studying tornado effects on buildings and, more generally, the role of turbulence on the aerodynamic mechanisms. To support the translation of research into practice, he is actively involved in building codes and standards committees, serving on Canada’s National Building Code committees for Climate Change Adaptation and as Chair of the ASCE 49 Standards Committees on wind tunnel testing and procedures.

Abstract

Aerodynamic load coefficients for buildings are set by the vortices and flow features that result from flow separations at wall and roof edges and their subsequent reattachment onto building surfaces. Turbulence alters these significantly with separated-reattaching shear layers being controlled by atmospheric turbulence with scales on the order of 1 to 10 times the reattachment length. The usual aerodynamic mechanisms and turbulent processes associated with separated and reattaching flows are disrupted and controlled by interactions with the atmospheric turbulence at these “active” scales. While aerodynamic loading is well established for atmospheric boundary layer wind fields, they are less well understood for tornadoes, where the strongly swirling wind field in the vortex core alters the flow patterns. Of particular importance is that the scale and duration of passage of tornadoes past typical buildings is within the active range of scales, profoundly altering the aerodynamic loading. The paper will examine the current state of knowledge regarding these issues.

Background

Ivan Marusic is the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research Infrastructure) and a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne. His research primarily involves experimental and theoretical studies of turbulence at high Reynolds numbers, including using atmospheric surface layer flows and large wind tunnel facilities. He is a recipient of the Stanley Corrsin Award from the American Physical Society and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society, Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and the Australian Academy of Science. In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Abstract

The logarithmic law for the mean velocity profile has long served as a cornerstone of wall-turbulence modelling, yet the universality of its constants remains debated for turbulent boundary layers subjected to pressure gradients. This talk presents an overview of recent progress on this problem, drawing on high-Reynolds-number experiments and modelling of adverse-pressure-gradient boundary layers in which the local pressure gradient and its upstream development are independently controlled. Results show that the von Kármán coefficient remains invariant across a range of conditions, while the additive constant and the extent of the logarithmic region depend systematically on both the local pressure gradient and its upstream history. These findings motivate a new composite mean velocity profile capable of capturing pressure-gradient effects across the boundary layer, along with an examination of the underlying flow structure, which reveals a competition between a universal wall-attached eddy hierarchy and an outer-scaled, wall-incoherent motion tied to the pressure gradient. Connections to the idealised sink-flow boundary layer — the theoretical benchmark for a "pure" wall flow — will also be discussed. Together, these results offer a broader picture of how pressure gradients shape both the scaling and structure of wall turbulence, pointing toward more physically grounded models for non-equilibrium wall flows.

Background

Laurent Mydlarski received an Honours Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo (Canada). He subsequently obtained his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University (USA). He is presently a Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University (Canada), which he joined upon completion of his doctoral studies, and where he carries out fundamental research on turbulent flows, with a focus on scalar mixing therein. He has also undertaken applied research on the cooling of both microelectronics and hydroelectric generators with multiple industrial partners. At McGill, Professor Mydlarski teaches courses in Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, Thermodynamics, and Turbulence. He served as Associate Dean (Academic Programs) in the Faculty of Engineering from 2014-2020, during which he was responsible for academic, curricular, accreditation, and pedagogical matters. Professor Mydlarski has led the development of McGill University’s Bachelor of Global Engineering program, offered jointly with CentraleSupélec (France), and has served as the program’s Founding Director since 2022. He is an Associate Editor of Fluid Dynamics Research and a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec.

Abstract

A variety of natural and man-made processes rely upon the transfer of heat and/or mass within turbulent flows. Given that both heat and mass are scalar quantities, this process is often referred to as turbulent scalar mixing. To predict and/or control these phenomena, we must first be able to quantify the mixing of the scalars that underlie them. For this reason, turbulent scalar mixing has been the subject of research for many decades. However, multiple processes and phenomena involve the transport of more than one scalar, including atmospheric science (in which temperature and humidity are transported), oceanic science (temperature and salt), chemical reactors (multiple chemical species react to produce one or more chemical products), etc. Moreover, turbulent multiscalar mixing has been the subject of relatively few investigations. For this reason, the present talk will first review some of the literature on multiscalar mixing. Particular focus will be placed on the quantification of multiscalar mixing by way of mixing metrics, including how existing metrics – developed for the mixing of a single scalar – cannot fully describe the mixing of multiple scalars. To this end, a novel multiscalar mixing metric will be discussed and assessed using both experimental and numerical data in which multiple scalars are mixed in different turbulent flows.

Background

Naoko Tokugawa received her M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Engineering from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan. She is a Senior Researcher at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and currently serves as an Advisor to the Director in the Aviation Technology Directorate. She is also a Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Gakushuin University, and Tokyo University of Science. Her research focuses on aerodynamics, particularly laminar flow technology, boundary-layer transition, and high-Reynolds-number experiments. She serves as a Director of both the Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics and the Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

Abstract

Natural laminar flow (NLF) technology is a promising approach for reducing aircraft skin-friction drag and thereby supporting the realization of a carbon-neutral society. Unlike active laminar flow control, NLF delays boundary-layer transition through careful airfoil shaping without the use of flow-control devices. Although the concept has been studied for decades, its application to modern transonic aircraft remains challenging because both crossflow instability near the leading edge and Tollmien–Schlichting (T–S) instability farther downstream must be suppressed simultaneously.

Practical implementation requires more than a robust design methodology. Because boundary-layer transition is highly sensitive to surface roughness and free-stream turbulence, stringent control of manufacturing quality and in-service maintenance is essential. Moreover, the aerodynamic performance measured in wind-tunnel tests cannot be directly extrapolated to full-scale flight conditions.

This presentation reviews research on natural laminar flow technology, with particular emphasis on results obtained at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The presentation focuses on applications to various aircraft configurations, validation under flight-representative conditions, and manufacturing and in-service maintenance for practical implementation.

Background

Speaker information will be posted soon.

Abstract

Abstract to be announced.

Oral Presentations

Invited Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Christian Hasse

Gregory Kopp

Ivan Marusic

Laurent Mydlarski

Naoko Tokugawa

Winner of the Nagano Award

Keynote Speakers

Kyle Daun

Dennice Gayme

Sina Ghaemi

Jean-Pierre Hickey

Jiarong Hong

Philippe Lavoie

Sivakumaran Nadarajah

Matei Radulescu

Carey Simonson

Hiroshi Terashima

Christina Vanderwel

Patrizio Vena