Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Construction of hydrodynamic models for nonequilibrium flows: Application to hypersonics -- Note: in POB 4.304

Marco Panesi, Professor, Aerospace Engineering, and Director: Center for Hypersonics and Entry Systems Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

The simulation of the aerothermal environment surrounding vehicles moving at hypersonic speed is a complex problem due to its multiphysics and multi-scale nature. Progress in accurately modeling these systems has been hindered by the lack of reliable physical models for the thermochemical and transport processes that dominate the dynamics of the flow. The most physically consistent description of nonequilibrium flows relies on the direct numerical solution of the kinetic equations for each internal state of the gas particles. However, for problems of interest, the exponentially large many degrees of freedom, and the wide range of spatial and temporal scales involved, make these equations unsolvable. This talk outlines a new paradigm for constructing predictive modeling and simulation tools from a fundamental physics perspective, rejecting the empiricism that has prevented progress in modeling hypersonic flows for decades. Inspired by model reduction strategies developed in statistical physics, this work addresses the challenges of the combinatorial explosion of the possible configurations of the system, obtaining new governing equations by projecting the master equation onto a few lower-dimensional subspaces. The distribution function within each subspace is then reconstructed using the Maximum Entropy Principle, thus ensuring compliance with the Detailed Balance. I will cover the critical aspects involved in model development: (1) using direct numerical simulation to study the fundamental physics; (2) derivation of a reduced-order set of equations that give an accurate and physically consistent description of the physics at a much-reduced computational cost: (3) Validation and uncertainty quantification.

Biography

Marco Panesi is currently a Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and director of the Center for Hypersonics and Entry System Studies (CHESS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In 2009, he received a Ph.D. from the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics. He completed a post-doc with the PECOS center, one of the five DOE-funded PSAAP centers, at Oden’s Institute. Panesi joined the faculty in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor in August 2012.  Panesi has won several awards, including the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF), the Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from AFOSR, and the Early Career Faculty award from NASA. He has won the Best Paper/Presentation Awards at AIAA conferences several times. In 2015, he received the Award on Physical Modelling at the Symposium on Aerothermodynamics for Space Vehicles (ESA) for his contribution to the fundamentals of Aerothermodynamics.