Bharath Ganapathisubramani

Turbulent boundary layers subjected to streamwise varying pressure gradients are abundant in engineering applications and environmental flows. The interaction between imposed pressure gradient and turbulent boundary layer significantly alters the flow structure and in turn affects overall performance, load distributions, vibrations and noise. In this talk, I will present results from a series of high-Reynolds number wind tunnel experiments on smooth and rough-wall turbulent boundary layers subjected to pressure gradient histories of different forms and strengths. The influence of these different pressure gradients on mean flow, fluctuations and turbulent structures will be presented. I will discuss new insights on these complex flows and show our efforts towards development of data-driven models for predicting such non-equilibrium flows.

Biography

Bharathram Ganapathisubramani is Professor of Experimental Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Southampton. His research and teaching interests are aerodynamics, hydrodynamics and propulsion relevant to transportation, energy generation and autonomous systems. Bharath was born and brought up in Chennai (India). He completed his undergraduate degree in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (1995-1999). Upon completion, he moved to the University of Minnesota in the US where he secured his Masters and PhD in Aerospace Engineering (1999-2004). He followed this with a stint as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin in the Centre for Aeromechanics research (2004-2006). He moved to the UK as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London (2007-2010). He has been in Southampton since 2010, first as Senior Lecturer and then as Professor. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Experiments in Fluids and Flow (the former focuses on the development and application of experimental methods in fluid flows while the latter on practical applications of fluid mechanics). He is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Insitute as well as an Associate Fellow of AIAA. He is a member of the executive and management boards of the National Wind Tunnel Facility. He also serves on the executive and advisory committees of various international conferences.